For those that don't know, Chris and I have horrible luck with plants. When we first got married we had gotten an Aloe Vera plant (aka Planty) from BYU-Idaho in October 2009. (Every Friday they have a plant sale. We used to go just to look at the plants every Friday, don't anymore because I have no need to walk to where they are sold). Then over the summer we had re-potted it because it was getting big. Chris also had sunburned it by putting it out in the sun. Then I think it was about September 2010 I touched the plant and a stem/leaf thing fell right off. Yep that is right, it was dead and in fact had been sitting on our bookshelf for probably about a month dead, pretty pathetic I know.
After that I had gotten a bamboo from Walmart. I like having plants in the apartment, but just have horrible luck with them. Bamboo plant is actually the only plant that we have kept alive for any length of time (a year, knock on wood).
Then sometime last year after Planty had died we had seen a Jade plant at the plant sale. We had a pot that Planty was in and soil, so we decided to give it another go. Well enough this summer while we were in California I noticed that the leaves were falling of and yes sure enough it was dead. It was at that point that I had given up with the whole plant thing, we still had bamboo plant but all you do is drown it in water. Then when we went to Calaveras Big Trees State Park in California to see the Giant Sequoias Chris saw the little Giant Sequoia trees that you could buy in a little tube and plant. He really wanted one so we decided to get one because Jade Plant was dead and we had a pot. Well, I think that lasted about a month... and the soft little Baby Sequoia Tree was turning all hard and dead like. Sure enough we had killed yet another plant. The Sequoia actually had a guarantee on it so we could have called them and they would have gave us a new tree we would just have to pay or shipping but I didn't even want to bother with that because the next one would probably have ended up dead as well.
So the other day I was thinking that I really wanted a Christmas Cactus because they are so pretty and seem to be pretty hardy as well (but what classifies as a hardy plant to most people meets a very different classification for us). Then we decided to go to the plant sale and see the plants because I didn't have work and didn't want to go straight home right away after my one class on Friday. We then saw the Christmas Cactus's and asked a lot of questions as to what plants are somewhat kill resistant. We decided to give the plant thing another try. We had also got to thinking that maybe the pot that we had wasn't very well draining and that could have been why the other plants died after talking to the people. So we spent some time driving around Rexburg going to different stores to try to find a new pot. We had gone to Walmart, K-Mart, Cal Ranch, and finally at our last stop when we were thinking we would have to go to Idaho Falls we found one at Valley Wide Home and Ranch. It was on clearance and wasn't well draining, but we put some holes in the bottom so that it would be. Here is our little Christmas Cactus that we got. It is a Dark Marie variety.
It is a pretty little plant and crazy how much it has changed just in the short time that we have had it. When we got it yesterday morning none of the blossoms were open. Then by yesterday afternoon we noticed that they were starting to open a little, and by this morning two were all the way open. Very pretty! Just hoping that we can keep this plant alive and enjoy the blossoms next Christmas.
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