It’s My Birthday! - January 17, 2020 @goldenoakfarm

I woke on Friday and found a vase of roses on my office desk, along with a birthday card, a chocolate bar, and a present.

The roses were gorgeous! The candy bar was a favorite of mine: dark chocolate (70%) with sea salt.

And the present was from my sister. I have wanted a hearth cricket for a long time. They are supposed to bring luck. It will sit on the mantle of the masonry heater. It has a pretty coppery overlay on it.

My husband had ordered a sweatshirt for me but it had gotten backordered. It’s very pretty and hopefully will show up some day.

I got the enchilada post written, got my morning chores done and went to the gym. It was one of the better days at the gym.

My helper friend was here and we worked on root pruning, pruning, and repotting the upstairs philodendron, the asparagus fern from the bathroom, and the pineapple.

We did the asparagus fern first because it has lots of tiny thorns and we’d have to use gloves. It took a while to disentangle all the stems. I thought it was pot bound because there were some branches with leaves with tiny white spots on them.

But it turns out I must have root pruned it within the last year. (I MUST get the house plant notes started!) So we took off the spotty branches, and cleaned the pots up.

The philodendron from the bedroom had lost a lot of leaves during the summer, when I wasn’t watering regularly. It got moved to the hall, a north window, and wasn’t happy.

I thought if I root pruned it, pruned back the leafless vines, and got the salt off the pots, it might be happier. But it turns out it has much more delicate vines than the pothos, and all but one broke in the disentangling process. The vines were 15’ – 25’ long. I put a lot of the ends of them in a jar of water.

So it got root pruned and new soil, the salt off the pots and hung back in the north window. I hope it lives.

At some point in the last year, this pineapple got knocked over and its pot broken. I didn’t have time to deal with it, so I stuck it in a jar of water. But it kept getting knocked over, as the leaves stick out so far.

So I decided to repot it with a heavy pot and heavy cache pot, and cut the badly broken leaves back. Hopefully this will work, and some day I can put it in a place where people don’t go by it regularly.

When my helper friend left, we planned to take my favorite coat in to be repaired. We got ready and left, as just as we reached our destination, my husband asks where the coat is. Of course, it is hanging in the kitchen. So that didn’t get done.

After another errand we headed over to try out a new-to-us restaurant in Hadley. We had a nice meal, and the portions were so big, I had enough for supper.

From there we went to the Smith College greenhouses. The smells and plans and textures and flowers were heavenly. I’m going to do a separate post on that.

As we drove through the center of Smith College we found this young redtail hawk guarding a car flattened squirrel. It was not fazed by the traffic.

We came home after another errand and took it easy the rest of the day. It had turned bitterly cold and windy. We found messages on the machine from my mom and my son wishing me a Happy Birthday. I called them back and talked a while with both.

With the wood stove going and Downton Abbey in the player, it was a lovely afternoon. Leftovers from the diner for supper and more Downton Abbey, then off to bed.

A lovely Birthday day!