meeyauw: Ferns and Ivies in the Kitchen

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Ferns and Ivies in the Kitchen

The asparagus fern waits for us to find a pot big enough for it.

Every March I typically have a fever to see green things. This is understandable to people living here in the Kingdom. With three feet of snow on the ground, it can be difficult imagining that summer will ever return. This past March, my sister, Camille, and I made one of our famous shopping trips. Instead of going book shopping, we went plant shopping in Lyndonville.

Camille lives in the Lyndonville area so she took me to White's Market to look at houseplants. Camille also advised me to get an asparagus fern because, she said, they are easy to care for and grow a lot. The asparagus fern at White's Market was huge and I wasn't sure that I wanted it. But then Julia, the floral designer, saw us and came to assist us. Julia is a gem. She knows her plants and is so enthusiastic that she convinced me that I can grow anything. She introduced me to new plants that I never considered buying, and made me very excited about the prospect of being a successful gardener. I ended up buying the asparagus fern, a large Boston fern, two small lemon button ferns (which are variants of Boston ferns), a huge grape ivy, two small English ivies, a large shamrock and a small schefflera. White’s Market must be very pleased with Julia!

The asparagus fern takes a bath.

All of the plants are doing very well here at the house. In fact, the asparagus fern is doing so well that it was growing in front of my eyes — it was growing into other pots that were near it. It became bigger and bigger and by April 9 we had to repot it. It took the brute strength of John to get it out of the pot and had to be divided into two. After a nice bath, we hung it in the living room where the spider plant used to be. We moved the spider plant into the kitchen sun porch.

Repotted asparagus fern now hangs in the living room.

The spider plant now hangs in the sun porch. John built the bookcase on the side of the double oven. It holds our cookbooks. The bookcase is made from pine salvaged from the old porch

The divided and repotted angel wing begonia.
This begonia was a gift from Barb, a friend at the library.

Instead of curtains, I have used the Boston fern (right) and a Swedish ivy from the C&C (left) to frame the kitchen windows. John used a 200 year old piece of Douglas fir as a functional trim to hold the weight of the hanging plants. We can add smaller planters as we desire in the future.