A tree story
Jul. 23rd, 2024 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeI have a little ficus tree (ficus benjamina), and I've had it for a very long time, about 35 years, maybe longer. I'd brought a little ficus tree with me in the back seat of my car when I moved to California, but R. managed to kill it and bought me this one as a replacement - it's variegated, whereas the other had been plain green, and it has multiple trunks while the other had one main trunk. We moved this new tree from house to house in California and eventually came back up to Oregon, where it's mostly lived on my kitchen counter, near the window, in the winter and outside near the front door in the summer.
Maybe five or six years ago, it had something of a growth spurt and didn't fit well on my counter anymore (about 4 feet tall), but it looks lovely in J's entryway, in a corner. So it's been spending winters there instead. The trouble is, there's very little natural light in that spot, so it's much harder to bring it outside again in the spring - even keeping it in the shade the light is too much for it, and most of the leaves die. Then new leaves sprout, and it recovers, but the process seems very stressful. (I've tried introducing it to outdoor light levels more gradually, but it just doesn't work well.) Last summer, I just left it in J's house - but this spring it was looking unwell, and I concluded that I'd basically starved it too much by keeping it in, and it had better go back out. Sure enough, the root system had shrunk substantially.
So almost 12 weeks ago, I started moving it outside again... but this time all the leaves died, and nothing sprouted back. I had killed my poor ficus.
I was lazy about putting it into the yard debris bin - I felt bad, so I just stuck it in the collection of outdoors potted plants, at least one of which is also dead, a stewartia with a very pretty branching pattern. I water them (the living ones) most days, but any water that went to the poor dead ficus was wholly accidental, just part of the process of moving the hose around.
So guess what?
The ficus is still alive after all! Weeks went by, it looked as dead as could be, but today I saw green leaves! I've moved it back to its place of honor. Maybe the part that's alive is now small enough that it will fit back onto my kitchen counter?
(Of course this does reinforce my tendency not to throw things out because they might somehow revive or become useful again. I'm afraid I get such reinforcements fairly often.)
(Still overly busy; I hope to get caught up on comments soon!)
Maybe five or six years ago, it had something of a growth spurt and didn't fit well on my counter anymore (about 4 feet tall), but it looks lovely in J's entryway, in a corner. So it's been spending winters there instead. The trouble is, there's very little natural light in that spot, so it's much harder to bring it outside again in the spring - even keeping it in the shade the light is too much for it, and most of the leaves die. Then new leaves sprout, and it recovers, but the process seems very stressful. (I've tried introducing it to outdoor light levels more gradually, but it just doesn't work well.) Last summer, I just left it in J's house - but this spring it was looking unwell, and I concluded that I'd basically starved it too much by keeping it in, and it had better go back out. Sure enough, the root system had shrunk substantially.
So almost 12 weeks ago, I started moving it outside again... but this time all the leaves died, and nothing sprouted back. I had killed my poor ficus.
I was lazy about putting it into the yard debris bin - I felt bad, so I just stuck it in the collection of outdoors potted plants, at least one of which is also dead, a stewartia with a very pretty branching pattern. I water them (the living ones) most days, but any water that went to the poor dead ficus was wholly accidental, just part of the process of moving the hose around.
So guess what?
The ficus is still alive after all! Weeks went by, it looked as dead as could be, but today I saw green leaves! I've moved it back to its place of honor. Maybe the part that's alive is now small enough that it will fit back onto my kitchen counter?
(Of course this does reinforce my tendency not to throw things out because they might somehow revive or become useful again. I'm afraid I get such reinforcements fairly often.)
(Still overly busy; I hope to get caught up on comments soon!)
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Date: 2024-07-26 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-27 07:36 am (UTC)