Christopher Lloyd wrote in The Well-tempered Garden:
"Gardening, like living, should be fun. It can't be much of the time, but we can do our best to make it so. It is that intangible something which immediately proclaims that behind the scenes there is an original whose guiding hand has created something ephemeral; ephemeral, yes, but with the magic of a sunset".
Living up to such a statement of intent is going to be difficult- this is not hard to realize especially when one has just bought an Alocasia x Amazonica 'Polly', a challenging plant at the best of times, imagine for an accidental indoor gardener...
I mean, I can do Peperomias, Calatheas and Stromanthes and Ctenanthes, Dieffenbachias- just about- and Citrus and Olea... but this is a whole different ball game, and it called for a blog, my very first blog ever.
Now what has got me to move from the challenging (the Ctenanthes and co.) to what seems by all accounts to be the almost impossible, were two things. One was watching the fantastic photos of the Exotic Rainforest (fantastic!). The second, total irresponsibility. But honestly, when one reads from "Foliage plants for decorating indoors" by Virginie F. and George A. Elbert, Timber Press:
"We have always esteemed them the most aristocratic of the aroids."
how can one resist?
So out I went on the Net looking for Alocasia- any type. And I found it! (Which honestly, is far from assured when you're talking a house Alocasia, not an Elephant's Ear for your garden... at least in the UK.)
I found it at the House of Plants, which in a few days provided me with a splendid specimen of 'Polly' which had just arrived. (Thanks, you've been great!)
I have repotted it this afternoon- a wet and windy one, which after the beautiful blue skies of the last days feels even worse than it actually is. I came back from work as soon as I got to know that the plant was there, almost running in the park. Taking it out of the perfectly packaged box was thrilling... and there it was, in all its nine-leaved splendor!
I put the pot in a nice cream cache-pot I bought for the occasion, and I placed it on the stairs, where the tall '70s style window will hopefully let enough light in even in the worst of the English weather. Here it is!
