Why do We (I) do this?

I've mentioned some of the exotics and tropics that I have and it comes to mind that the casual observer may say, “Why?”. There are hundreds of beautiful zone 8 plants, many gorgeous natives in Oregon. Why would you want to deal with the difficulty of having non-native tropicals and the like when they are that much more of a headache? Why would you want to spend so much time working with plants that could, with just the smallest wrong move die, causing you so much wasted time and effort?

Challenge.

And I know it's not just me. Many people, many gardeners enjoy the challenge of growing something that isn't “normal”. We like the weird, we like the different. I love tulips to death, but they're easy (hopefully I won't raise the ire of any tulip growers with that statement...). Drosera regia isn't. Irises are easy, Heliamphora isn't. There's a reward, though subtle, for growing plants that most people are afraid to try. Even more for plants that people don't even realize exist.

I'm not the only person who does this sort of thing, but I feel a definite sense of accomplishment to tread where few step. And it's not just gardeners, of course. Many people constantly push the boundaries of what is and isn't possible. People like to go to places were few or no people have been before. I'm not sure what drives us, but I know that calling.

It's a little different for everyone. Mine just happens to be derived from the want to prove that certain plants can be grown here, where the winters, though mild, frequently dip below freezing (which isn't ideal for any tropical I can think of). And I like to think that I might help contribute to the wealth of human knowledge, in my own little way.

I'd like to think that some of the work I do will eventually help expand our knowledge of the limits of certain plants. What I learn today I hope to turn into research papers later. I want to have helpful tips and easy to use guides for people just starting. I want to provide answers for people searching into Google, “Can I grow pineapples in Oregon?” (by the way, the answer is yes, and it's not even that hard, in fact, and I just learned this, my uncle was *very* successful in growing pineapples in Oregon).

There is a personal appeal to discovering knowledge to pass on to people. But, perhaps, the simple thing is:

My challenge in growing is to prove my worth.

Afterword:

This sprang up from a conversation I had with my cousin, Chris Rombough, about the allure of growing the difficult, just because we can. I had a hard time putting into words the desire I have to do this, and at a family get together a couple weeks ago, we were discussing it. His dad, my uncle, would constantly try to grow out of the ordinary plants, trying to push the boundary of what you can do in Oregon. My first blog post talked about him, and covered some of the work that he did. And he inspired us both.

And as a shout out to what Chris does for a living, he is a fish and wildlife surveyor and educator. He's even appeared on OPB (Oregon's local PBS station) a couple times, both times on Oregon Field Guide. One appearance is in the Silent Invasion special, talking about the destructive impact of invasive species, the other a regular episode, with a segment on “Field Herping”.  I absolutely recommend watching the entirety of Silent Invasion, but if you want to skip ahead, his segment begins around the 43 minute mark.  The videos are below.

http://www.opb.org/programs/invasives/videos.php?page=full

http://ec2-50-18-136-176.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/programs/ofg/segments/view/1675

Depression and Dealing with Loss

It's an odd title for a botany-themed blog isn't it? But it's relevant to what I'm going to talk about today.

First off, I apologize to my friends, family, and everyone following this blog, because I have been away for so long without any new material. I have mentioned before that I am a student, what I haven't mentioned before is that I also have a chronic health problem, one that on any given day may be tolerable or horrendous. Sadly, for the last two months, it has fallen on the side of vicious. It's disrupted my hobbies of botany, my personal relationships, and my job. It's pretty much taken over my life. And with such a disruption, paired with being home bound so frequently, it's led me straight into depression.

I hope that most of the people reading this will never ever have to deal with depression (or ulcerative colitis, for that matter). But for those that have suffer, and do suffer still, from it, it's a horrible disease. It eats you up inside, it doesn't let you do anything you want or need to do, and better yet, it convinces you that you don't want to do them. I work in IT, and I love it. I love coming into work, seeing friends and getting meaningful work done. I love being a problem solver and helping people get their technological needs met. It's part of who I am, but depression tells me that I don't want to do it, that I can't do it, that I'll never be good enough to do it. It makes you want to give up everything you love, and it's too good at convincing you of your shortcomings. It also likes to point out how many mistakes you make, as well as making them seem much worse than they are. Depression will turn all of your negative thoughts into self-fulfilling prophesies.

I'm not even sure if there is anything I can say to anyone else to help them get through these times, as I am certainly still embroiled in my own depression. But if I could say one thing to anyone who reads this, who suffers, or may suffer in the future, it would be to never listen to that bastard. It's never as bad as your depression tells you it is. People love and care about you and you are a wonderful and needed person. We all have gifts to share with the world. You matter, and what you do matters. I ask too that if it starts getting too difficult to deal with, please talk to someone, don't keep it inside. The longer you wait to get help the worse it will get, and it will be that much harder to get away from it.

This may sound weird, but I take plant losses very seriously. To me, losing a plant can hurt just as much as losing a pet. They are living, breathing organisms, and we take them in our care, in our homes, just as we do animals. It can be very difficult to lose one, but for me, most recently, I had many losses (and almost losses) all at once. It was hard to deal with, both personally and professionally. Who am I to offer advice and to teach all my readers about plants when I lose 20 some plants all at once to a few stupid screw-ups? Well, in a lot of ways, it perhaps proves that we all make mistakes, and, though hard, it's an important lesson. I won't forget what I learned from my experience, and I am also here to help tell you what not to do.

About 2 weeks ago, I tried to give my Nepenthes some extra light to help stimulate pitcher production. They need UV light to promote healthy pitcher production. I figured that removing my greenhouse cover would help them with this (it's important to note that on the best days, my greenhouse only gets about 5 hours of direct light, so I figured that this would be fine for my plants). Well, they loved it, all but two that is. My Nepenthes petiolata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepenthes_petiolata) and my N. hamata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepenthes_hamata) did not like the light. They both suffered severe sunburn from the experience. Now, they could recover on their own, and the petiolata was, however, the sunburn was extensive and severe enough on the hamata that it got a fungal infection (which is what I was worried about when I saw the burn). Now, I certainly don't advocate doing this on a regular basis, and I tried to let it weather the storm, waiting a couple weeks watching to see if it would recover, but as I had lost a Nepenthes recently that I had been trying to save for the last 6 months, only to watch it slowly succumb to disease and die, I broke out my tebuconazole, which is a very potent systemic fungicide, and I waited.

While this was happening, I had also moved my sarracenia starts to a new location so that they could start being weaned off of the humidity dome, and also so that I could put a new batch of seedlings underneath the plant light. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that so much water had evaporated from the tray, and the next morning I found about 20 dried and dead Sarracenia. Another 30 or so have slowly withered away and died since.

I recently replanted my two dragonfruit starts that I grew from seed outdoors in terracotta pots. I just used regular potting soil (it's what they had been in previously) and they were growing and acclimating to the new levels of sunshine and loving life, and then one day they both collapsed. Both of their root systems have rotted away, and I suspect some sort of fungal infection transmitted by gnats (or some other small flying insect). When I brought them in, the one that had it worst had them on the soil. I've seen this before in my Nepenthes hybrid that died.

I have a Drosera regia (King Sundew) that I got late last year, and it's beautiful (and temperamental). Regias are cool because they (like the D. capensis) will wrap their leaves around their prey, usually very dramatically. I have heard stories(big fish stories?) of them tying themselves in knots over insects they catch. They are also the largest of the sundews, growing up to two feet in height when fully grown. They are very neat. Mine started to die back drastically and rapidly. It had been in the same spot for some time and was happy and healthy, only to suddenly and dramatically start to wither away.

All of these events happened within a 3 or 4 day span, and in the middle of my aforementioned depression, it sent me spiraling downward. But there is always hope, and loss is a part of life. It's never easy to deal with losing a plant, a pet, or a person, but we all pull through, in our own way. And oftentimes, things aren't as bleak as they initially appear to be.

I removed my Nepenthes from their current shelter, put them under a gentler light, used the fungicide (as I mentioned earlier), and gave them extra attention and time. They are both recovering, both showing new growth, and the petiolata even has a new pitcher that has opened up. They are now back with the rest of my collection, enjoying the (once again) filtered sunlight. I refilled the Sarracenia tray, up to a very high level compared to earlier, replaced the dome and put them back under the plant light, I figured at the least, I would save the ones that were still healthy, but to my surprise some of the Sarracenia starts that I had pegged as dried out and dead have new growth popping out. I snipped off the roots of one of the dragonfruit starts (they were mostly gone by this time anyway), and then noticed that the other has already severed it's connection to it's roots. I set them in shallow cups of filtered water with some sulfur spray to reduce the chance of fungus (sulfur is an organic option to the tebuconazole, however it only works as a preventative, once the damage has started, it won't reverse it. And although my dragonfruits are probably still the most delicate, at least one seems to be re-rooting. And my regia just really needed a trim. I cut off the older dead leaves from the base and (for good measure) put it in a brighter spot, it's recovering and seems much happier.

Not every sad story will have a happy ending, however, if I can impart anything to my readers, things aren't often as bad as they seem. Sometimes things work out better than we expect, and we are often better people for having gone through them and learned from our mistakes. It was a painful lesson, but I did learn a lot over this ordeal.