Moving Forward

Our fish tanks make me happy.  There are times when other aspects of life keep me from caring for our tanks the way I should.  I am notorious for not doing water changes, something that probably contributed to our latest tragedy.  Still, a 50% water change and continued care is showing progress.  Of course, we now have a red slime problem...oh, well, I am looking at it as a challenge.

Cora and I have had these tanks for quite awhile.  We began the 30 gallon tank in 2006.  Shortly after we started a ten gallon reef tank...unfortunately, the reef tank drained of its water in 2008.  Two years before this latest debacle.  I had salt water tanks in Ellensburg...back in 1995-98.  We moved back to Yakima and shortly after that, we gave up on the tanks as too much work.

At least, I always have Cora.  I love this picture of her.  She looks good when she is out in the wild.

We have been together for a while now.  When we got married we went to Walt Disney World for our honeymoon.  On the way back we stopped in Salt Lake City.  I bought a touristy cactus "egg" which had seeds.  I planted them and woo hoo, in two weeks I had a ton of little cacti.  I had a decent amount of die-off in the next six months.  I gave some away and kept a few.  Today I have seven or eight left over.  One is about 8 inches tall.  I think it's a saguaro.  Below is a pair of the hold overs.  

No wonder the South Western states protect cacti so fervently.  It takes A LONG TIME for them to grow to a decent size.  These two below are ten years old and are only a couple inches tall!

In 2008 I bought more Cactus seeds when we visited Arizona.  I planted some of them and they have not grown very much at all.  None are more than a half inch.  I suspect, if I ever have a kid with a green thumb, I will give my cacti away.  Hopefully they will bring someone happiness for a long time after I am gone.  

Hope Sprouts Eternal...Well, Palms Do, Apparently...

I enjoy having plants. My thumb is somewhat tarnished, I would not say it is completely green, but it’s greenish. I have raised a few things from seed. When we came back from Disney World about 9 years ago, I brought some seeds on the flight back with me. Some cacti from Salt Lake City and some palms from Florida. My cacti worked nicely. I still have 8 or 9 from that batch. I also managed to get a Sago palm; it took almost 6 months to sprout. It reached about 9 inches tall and stopped growing. I took it to California with us. I figured it would grow better, but it eventually died, probably due to my mismanagement. I brought 4 palms home back from California. They were some that I had transplanted…dug up from the base of a local palm. Of the four, one survives today.

I have tried planting other seeds recently, by recently, I mean within the past year-and-a-half. I happened upon some American Chestnuts, apparently there is a stand here in Washington State that is still healthy, I am not sure that the department in charge of trying to bring the poor species back is aware of them, but I have been told that is what these chestnuts are. I planted them instead of eating them. Nothing. So, I was cleaning out my desk in the back room and stumbled upon some olive pits I brought back from CA. No guarantee they were fertile, but I planted them anyway…in the same pot as the chestnut, no use wasting soil, and maybe the chestnut WILL eventually sprout. No luck with the olives. So another item came from my desk. Some more palm seeds…these I have collected myself from several different species…in the pot they went. Then I planted some other seeds I found, these were the leftovers from our Florida trip, nine years ago. I planted the last bunch back in January? Since then it has sat in the kitchen window. I took a leaf that had come from an African Violet and thought perhaps it would sprout anew from the leaf. It stayed green and until the other day, when I was dripping some water on the base of the leaf and noticed a shoot. I picked up the leaf, it appeared to still be alive, but I tossed it in favor of what was now sprouting from my pot. The question now: what the hell is it? I suspect palms, but am unsure of the species it would be…probably Washingtonia filifera, that is the Californian Fan Palm. It’s the one that grows everywhere down there. Since that is the species I had the most seeds for, it is my assumption that I had the best chance of getting sprouts from them.

What do you think?

Below is a picture of a palm at Mare Island, with an Australian pine behind it...I don't remember the exact species

Here also, for your viewing pleasure, is a picture of my last California dug palm the way it is this morning.

My coffee plant.

Some seedling cacti! This is a barrel cactus.

These are Saguaros!