Monday, September 16, 2013

My kind of plant

Hey all! How are ya? I feel like poo today, and the weather matches – cold, rainy, icy. Poo.

Remember when I blogged about that fun vintage mart here near Indy? Well, while there I found something I had been looking for forever – air plants. I’ve seen these cool little plants for a year or so now and they’ve always intrigued me.

I’m a little plant crazy overall lately – since Christmas I think I’ve added quite a few new plants to our house, which I’ll share with you soon. They are all doing great, shockingly. Who knew I could keep them alive all the sudden? Not me.

Anyhoo, I found a booth at that mart that had hundreds of these little air plants and I was SO stinkin’ exited. I grabbed up a couple of them to try out. A few weeks ago I shared them on Instagram:

air plants

The guys at the booth told me to soak them in water a couple times a week and that’s all the care they really needed. Right up my alley baby!

Although when I posted this on Instagram Andrea mentioned that she only soaks hers every few weeks so I decided to try that out myself. Actually I just totally forgot to soak them again for a while, but at least her advice made me feel better about it. ;)

Turns out she’s right – they are THRIVING and I’ve only soaked them a couple times in four weeks. These little plants are the coolest!! You can’t really tell how much they’ve grown from the photos, but it’s just crazy.

The light wispy one started developing a little surprise a couple weeks ago:

flowering air plants

Just beautiful! Isn’t that amazing? No soil, hardly any watering. It really boggles my mind.

I’ve had them sitting on the window sill by the sink and they seem to love all the light. This one has grown a ton too, they sprout new plants at the base:

air plants

So I was at lunch near the fancy mall in town the other day and decided to stop in West Elm, and I walked out with these precious little bowls:

west elm bowls

If you follow me on Facebook you may remember these. ;) I saw them a couple months ago and passed them up because I didn’t have a plan for them -- but now I did. So darn cute!

I found air plants there too, so if you are looking for some check out West Elm. This one was cheaper than what I paid at the vintage mart:

air plants

I pulled out some filler, which is actually shell stuff from the pet store I picked up a while back just because I thought it was pretty:

I poured a little in each bowl, just enough to give the plants something to settle into, and then lined them up on the window sill above the kitchen sink:

air plants

I just love them all!

The flowering one is my favorite though – so delicate and pretty. I call this one my tiny dancer:

air plants

I didn’t realize till I got the bowls home how well they work with the drapes on that window – the blue, green and yellow tie in perfectly!:

air plants

They’ve done great in this spot so far, hopefully they’ll continue to flourish.

They join the little fern that could by the sink and I love the life they bring to this spot:

beadboard backsplash

Have you tried these little plants? Succeeded or no? The cool thing is you can place them just about anywhere – mine were just sitting out on the windowsill for weeks and did great. Like I said, they seem to love sun, but I think they’d do OK in less light as well. So fun!

P.S. The technical term for air plants is Tillandsia – you may be able to find them under that name too. I’ve seen them sold on Etsy!

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