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I really don't have a true
penchant for stuff that I have to interact with constantly which is
part of the reason I generally dislike malls, video games, customers
and people (customers aren't really people -- they're really evil
phantoms that hound me for no reason when I don't call them back 15
seconds after they send me an email).
I'm more than happy to be left alone to my own devices than
being dragged around doing whatnots and whatsits, though I make special
exceptions for plants, and the more unusual the better. I think I
have to blame an aunt for this sort of obsession because she grows a
lot orchids and hardy tropicals in her house which always made me envy
her since my own mother tends toward more conventional plants and lumps
them together so that it's nearly impossible to take care of them
without stepping over other plants so anything other than a geranium
dies after a few months. It also doesn't help that most tropicals
need temperatures above 70ºF and the house barely reaches above
65ºF in the winter. I've managed to get lucky, though.
Take for Clerodendrum ugandense
for instance:
Now how often are you going to find something like this in your
backyard? I originally saw this in the UCB botanical gardens
around March '00 and became instantly obsessed with it. Another
woman at the gift store saw and bought it before I did, so I had to
hunt around online for about 2 months looking for it. I finally
found it at worldplants and it began
a sort of mini-obsession with the more "exotic" plants that might
survive in the apartment I was living in. Though irony being that I
couldn't get the damn thing
to bloom, bought another one that was blooming at the '03 sale and then
realized that it wouldn't bloom unless it got at least 6 hours of sun
and it's hardy down to about 40ºF. Now it won't stop
blooming. Just don't touch the
leaves unless you like smelling like motor oil.
I'll update more later. I'm too lazy right now.
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