Oh hello!!

I know I know. But I have very good reasons for being away for so long. We're less than two weeks away from our move-in date, so we're trying to start packing/deal with our landlord who wants the house ready to show to new renters; I'm trying to solidify my new job, which means a lot of e-mails and brown-nosing and reading lots and lots of material that I don't necessarily really care about in order to pretend like I know what I'm talking about; I just finished writing a research paper (40 pages long!!!), so that took awhile... I think that's it... but I think that's enough to be getting on with, right?

Well, anyway, like I said, the paper is done, e-mails are written, we're not at all packed yet, but that's going to be tackled this weekend. So I find myself with a rare moment of peace- of mind and time. I finally took some pictures of some things that are growing away in my house!

I'm sorry these are such crap quality POS's but my camera phone is on its way out, and I think I took both of these photos right after a cup of coffee or something too. Anyway, the top photo is what remains of my very first attempts at growing succulents; the super tall one that can't hold itself up anymore and the tiny one up front PLUS the two succulents I pulled from my bouquet that are growing beautifully. And the bottom photo is my collection of succulents I 'stole' from California.

Everyone is growing well but I've been noticing that I can't get my succulents to spread-grow, they always grow up! Stop doing that!! I believe that they're getting too much light, but I don't want to take the light away from them. Also... no one is having babies!! I mean come on!!! My aloe plants won't stop having babies, they're like rabbits, but these succulents just keep growing up and up and up! I believe that they're getting too much water to grow babies. I'm supposed to behead them if the stems get too long... and I feel bad doing that.

Wanna' know what's what? I used my handy dandy gosucculent.com website to identify most of them. First photo first:
Cotyledon Powdered Sugar- the one that's too tall to stand on its own
Echeveria Glauca- probably most notable succulent, commonly called "chick-and-eggs"
Echeveria Nodulosa- the rare green with purple streaks
Echeveria Pulv-oliver- the one chillin' in the background

Second photo, from the left:
Crassula Hobbit
Sedum Rubrotinctum
Sedum Burrito
Glottyphyllum Linguiforme
Sedum Burrito again
Sedum Rubrotinctum again
Graptopetalum Paraguayense
And one more Crassula Hobbit!

I'm pretty excited about how well everything is growing. I will let them do their thing until they all start to have babies or start growing out of control and then hopefully have a whole house full of succulents!! I know this might seem silly to some, but I am not a flower person. I don't like most flowers, and I hate that flowers only bloom once a year and then you have to plant more or stare at ugly bare stems for the rest of the year. Succulents look like flowers and come in all different shapes and sizes and colors but 'bloom' all the time and are really hard to kill.

Anyway, there's not much else to get super excited about right now anyway. I'm just sitting on my hands waiting to move into a new house, waiting to submit and publish my paper, waiting to defend my thesis, waiting to get a new job... Not to sound like a total downer or anything ;)

Anyway, I think, now that I'm really seeing the horrible quality of those photos, that I might take close ups of individual plants. Not much else to blog about anyway. I'm trying to follow some food blogs more closely to get some good summer/grilling recipes... Anyone else sort of sitting around waiting for cool things to happen??