The autumn redeployment is underway. The houseplants are on the move.
About this time every October, I feel like armies could be moved with less effort. And yet I've been doing it for more than 15 years.
There are about 18 plants, more or less, that make the descent every spring from the third and fourth floors of my apartment building to the garden. They live in plastic pots, some of which slip into terra-cotta containers of various shapes around the patio or spotted under trees or in the beds. Others are disguised by coir liners in hanging baskets around the patio.
In spring, it's a lovely feeling. The plants are pretty sad after a long winter in north-facing windows. They are dusty and thin for lack of sunlight. They've been gasping in low humidity and heated air. Some may have spider mites or other afflictions. I feel like I'm liberating them, moving them out into the sun (well, shade) and the cleansing rain, out where predatory bugs can clear up the mites and aphids. Some I repot if they need it. I know they'll grow green and happy through the summer and be lush and full by fall.
I've usually taken a bunch of cuttings and rooted them over the winter to use for annual containers and underplanting: purple heart vine as a groundcover where the jack-in-the-pulpit dies away, variegated spider plants to take over a shady spot after the Virginia bluebells yellow and droop. These plants do fine beneath trees and between buildings because most of them are understory plants in their native tropical forests. That's why they can stand the shade of a Chicago interior.
It's the autumn retreat that is such a struggle. As the nights hit the high 40s, I know I'd better get it done. I dither for a week or so. But these are tropical and subtropical plants, and even when it doesn't downright freeze, such low temperatures are tough on them. So I try to get all this done at least a couple of weeks before the likely first frost.
First I have to make some hard choices. There are only so many windows, even north-facing windows, in my apartment, so only a few of the once-hopeful cuttings will make the cut. And always there's a plant or two from last year that fails the acid test: It's just not worth carrying back up three flights of stairs.
I've pretty much saturated my neighbors, family and friends with houseplants, but I'll try one more time to give some away. The scorned will be left to their doom in the first frost.
Next I have to scrounge through the collection in the basement to find the right size of basket for each of the chosen ones, and make sure each of these cachepots has a functional plastic liner to catch surplus water. A pinhole leak can be a major headache.
This year, as most years, I couldn't do it all in one day. I got the plants as far as the back porch stairs and gave out. They sat there, stationed step by step, for almost a week. I kept telling myself that they were at least too high to be killed by a ground frost.
None of these plants is anything special. I have no rare orchids or remarkable bromeliads. I don't know any of the cultivar names and have never bothered to try and figure them out. You could pretty much match the collection at any Home Depot. These are plants that are, obviously, not fussy.
But they are friends of mine. We've been through a lot together. We have a history. I know who gave me the foxtail fern and the cuttings for the spider plants and the prayer plant and the cactus and the begonia, although I could never remember all the many folks I've given cuttings to. I remember who I was with when I bought the staghorn fern. I remember every house and apartment the ficus and the arrowhead have ever lived in, and the people who spent time with me there. Some of these plants are decades old.
So when I get the plants upstairs (as I finally did last night) and arranged on their various tables and windowsills (which I have not; they're all on the dining-room floor) they won't just be air cleaners or sources of oxygen. They won't just soften my decor. They won't be just a taste of nature or a glimpse of summer in the depth of a Chicago winter. They are companions, protectors, memory-keepers. Like memories, they may dwindle and grow thin. Some will be lost. But most will live with me until it's spring again.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
