It feels like a bit of a miracle, really. The whole story really started with this tiny Jade plant, in a tiny pot, maybe three inches in diameter. She is about 4 years old now and around 21 inches tall. I can not really measure her correctly, because she is busy growing and winding and intertwining. And she has kids now too. In January I cut of seven of her branches, because they were just really out of control. Five of the branches are now very independent little plants. It is really an odd thing to say, but they all have developed personalities. They are all from the same mother tree, they all sit by the same window, and yet each one of them is different. There is the perfect one. It is not too big, not too small, just perfectly a shaped little plant, with one main stem and a little branch, there is the sly bolder one, still small, but with three branches now, all in a bright and happy spring green. We have the medium leaner, she is the one with red rimmed leaves and she is shy and likes to hug the ground. There is the big one, already 10 inches tall, but only because held up by chopsticks. The tallest one got the biggest pot too, so I have the feeling that it would really like to outgrow the mother now. The fifth little Jade tree is the tiny one, it is closest to the mother and it grows slowly and barely grows at all. It seems shy and the leaves are smaller, darker, but not as vigorous. I know this all sounds a bit ridiculous, of course, looking at my description it seems I am writing about children, not Jade plants.
And the ?garden? does not end with the jade plants. I salvaged this almost dead little plant a year and a half or so ago from the office. It was somewhere in a dark corner under somebody?s desk. It had 8 leaves maybe, all really pathetic, hanging off the sides of the pot. People were laughing at me when they saw me on the train with this thing. It was really a sad image. I gave the plant the standart rejuvenation treatment, by leaving it under running water for 20 minutes or so. She also has seven children now, and also keeps developing these really long stems with flowers, which end with new plants. I have to keep her from going int the pots of the other plants. Her current stem is 33 inches long. Three feet, seven branches. I really started cutting these down, because it was all out of control.
There were two other visitors I had to cut down completely. One of them was a large plant that just plantet itself in one of the pots and grew to almost a yard in size. She then started throwing these little black seeds all over the place. She had to go. Another visitor that I am currently in the process of removing is this really strong grass that just grew out on the side of one of the jade plants. It took the grass about a week or two to be about two feet tall and to drain most of the water from the jade plant. (The crawling one, with the red rims.) So I cut down the grass, which was a very sharp edged, but sweet tasting grass. (Wheat grass?) And it just does not want to give up. Even after the second cutting down, there are shoots that keep coming back. I have the feeling I will need to give it its own pot and just harvest it now and then. I will need to buy some potting soil anyway, just for mr.Potato. Yes, this one is a funniest of the stories. Somebody had dropped a potato in the Amish market on 50th street and 9th Avenue. The cashier had kept the potato by her register, so she can throw it out by the end of the day. I asked her if I can have it, just to have a little pet experiment in our overly air conditioned and windowless office. I put potato into one of my drawers and just left him there. After about a month or so it was time for us to move and now I could have just tossed Mr.Potato and moved on, but he really was a survivor. He managed to grow about 22 or so white shoots and attached to these are little round objects that almost look like little potatoes. I could not just throw him out. I took him home in a plastic bag. He now lives by the window in a flat dish with some water. Some of the shoots are slowly turning green in places and I have the feeling that I will need to emerge him in soil soon, so he can turn into a grown up plant.
The reason I started even writing this post is a plant that managed to grow in the pot with my tallest young jade tree. I know that it must really strange if I say that a 12 inch plant could have grown unnoticed, but it has. I have no idea when it got so big. I discovered it yesterday. It is a long (12 inches) red-blueish stem, with six relatively large leaves at the top. (more developing) and a tiny leaf about half way on the stem. I was not quite sure what it was at first, and then I remembered that I once had put this Avocado seed into the soil. It was so beautiful, I did not want to throw it out. It was also big and so I thought that it might be a nice addition to the soil in the big pot of the large young jade plant. I just pressed the seed into the soil, covered it with two large fallen off Jade leaves and completely forgot about it. The plant is not in the shade, it is not in the right potting soil, but (knocks on wood) it is somehow growing. I will need to find a new place for it perhaps, I just do not want to disturb it in any way now. Let?s see what develops. (I just read this, and it seems that the tree grew against all odds so far.
This is truly a garden of wonder I have here by my window. And I have not even mentioned some of the plants. I really thought that I have a great talent in killing plants. I certainly do not have a green thumb.

And this story continues