Monday, May 20, 2013

Pet at the 5th Floor

Pets inside condominium units are not allowed, except for aquarium fishes. By pets they mean animals, i suppose. But who else will say that a pet can only be an animal. Pets are loved, cared for, given sustenance regularly, pampered sometimes and, i am sure many of you will agree with me, getting the most hours from the owners/masters. That is my premise for calling this plants or flowers as my pets. Immediately after arriving from the office and entering my unit 'this pet' takes the first attention, next to turning on the lights. It even gets ahead than changing clothes.

The routine gets the same when i leave in the morning, checking, watering, etc, etc that a plant requires.

Our Hippeastrum puniceum originally are planted on the ground in my home in the province. With my new passion of collecting hippeastrum, i dug some bulbs and planted them in my city condominium unit at the 5th Floor. Its planter is outside my west window, receiving only direct afternoon sun. I take photos of every angle, every growth stage and every possible positions. I bet you do that to your babies and your pets! What else is new!


 At this stage, the pollen hasn't opened fully yet. There are two blooms in a scape, and out of 14 bulbs only two of them bloomed ahead. Scape is the hollow stem where the flowers grow.

You can see the window of the next unit, but its curtain provided a nice background for my pet flower.

But i have something to confess, despite the above nice  photos, the two scapes differed from each other very much. The above scape is too short compared to the normal length of its scape.

And you will see here their actual performance. The one on the left has 19 inches long scape, longer than the normal ones grown on the ground at home. On the other hand, the one on the right showed the total opposite, at its very short scape of only 3 inches. They received equal treatments, as far as I am concerned, but their performance has been giving a big challenge to my knowledge on plant physiology. I guess stress affects all plant growth performance and functions, but the effects differ among plants. How i wish i can put more time and attention to researching these anomalies, but i am not in actual research anymore. So i guess i will just let it be, and be happy with the differential performance of my pets. At least they provided more challenge and enthusiasm. I didn't know growing hippeastrum can be very interesting. 

LorikArt

14 comments:

  1. Gorgeous, Andrea. That plant makes a GREAT PET I think... It certainly is beautiful and makes you happy... As long as you feed and water it and take good care of it ---it will show off for you... AND--you don't have to take it to the 'potty'.... ha ha

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  2. I was hoping you would mention one very therapeutic thing that we normally do with pets -- talk to them, humming or whistling songs while gently touching them, and saying I LOVE YOU to them first thing in the morning and before you go to sleep. Nakalimutan mo lang siguro...

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    Replies
    1. Wow, you already know how to comment here, haha! I don't talk to the normal pets, we communicate through the mind, that is the language of the soul. I don't say ILY to them too, they already know and feel it, we are one!

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  3. You ARE very good to your pet! If I were to move to the 5th floor, I definitely would have a plant pet, and I would hide my two little dogs too - I could not live without them!

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  4. Your pets are beautiful, even the midget. I guess my roses are my pets.

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  5. Very pretty pet you have :-). They look like amyrallis, are they related? Is the plant a kind of orchid? I also consider all my plants as kind of my babies/pet; I take care of them like the way babies are taken care of.

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  6. I love animal pets, but I could never live without a plant! It is cheerful and changing, and doesn't need much attention. The difference between the two plants is intriguing, and so interesting. I do wonder why!

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  7. you found the loophole on the tenant contract about pets eh?

    my amaryllis isn't blooming yet.

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  8. I enjoyed seeing the flower from different viewpoints - and the final composition, Beautiful colour and beautiful flowers . Thank you for sharing on Mandarin Orange Monday:)

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  9. Pretty! I love amaryllis! Mine stay in the ground year-round (Flordia)and did not bloom this year- I think they did not get not enough sun and were crowded out by the bromeliads. Maybe the short plant had a bulb that didn't get to absorb it's strength for the coming year?

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  10. I often call my plants pets too :)

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  11. Do you have indoor pets too? I would love to see a full view of all your pets in a group picture. That will be an inspiration for my very own window.

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Your comments inspire me to post more, and our conversations make life and gardening more meaningful.

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