Rose Garten in the office

Admittedly I have murdered many thriving pots of roses since I started my gardening adventure. I ruefully have to agree that the indoor balcony is not conducive to growing roses. Neither is growing them outside which subjects them to thieving hands and winged pests.

So after お母さん's rose bush died shortly after she gave me a cutting and I made one cutting myself, my cutting survived (the one she gave me hasn't bloody grown roots and it has been 7 months!) to grow roots and all. I replanted it and gave it to お母さん again, saying that she should keep it and just give me the next viable cutting. She said, no she was trying to cut down on her garden in the office, and so she regifted it to me again.

I went around my floor looking for a good location, and asked one of the bigger bosses to let my rose hang out at her window seat (I am a windowless cubicle minion). She said ok, even though she is not into gardening.

Mr Bear knows of my obsession with roses (god knows, I moaned enough about them online and offline) and so one day while he was at Cheers (a 24-hour convenience store), he called me to ask if I still wanted roses. I asked how much, he said the smaller ones were S$6 a piece, so I asked for two pots. 

The extremely opportunistic me immediately brought them to the big boss again and asked if these pots can hang out at her window too. She said ok, but I think I should practise restraint now :D. Other than the weekends where the aircon is not switched on and no one is around to water them (one of them nearly perished after a long weekend of 4 days but managed to recover in time), the sunlight pouring through the windows are helping my roses bloom very well! Haven't killed any so far yet.

I brought this rose bud home from the office to show case my office rose, but it hasn't survived the trip in my bag. oops.

Zinnias - The Perfect Beginner Plant... for some Beginners

Actually the chrysanthemums were not the flowers I intended to put outside my door for Chinese New Year. My initial plan was for the two pretty pots of zinnias that I bought from the nursery. 

However 3-4 days into living at the L-shape, they started to look AWFUL. Dried and miserable. I watered thinking that they were thirsty. Nope, didn't work either. 

I started deadheading the blooms, especially when one of them had like white mold growing on it. I also found a cotton-seed-looking seed at my door. Later Mr Bear would tell me that this was actually the seed of the zinnia plant.  

But that was later, after I had found out what I did wrongly. In the meantime, desperate I turned to the Internet, and posted the fotos on gardening web and reddit. In the meantime, usual tips on zinnias said that they were a really easy annual to plant, sun-loving and somewhat drought-resistant.

Finally someone pointed out that these plants were actually adult bloomers and that the plants were overcrowded and the roots were not drawing enough nutrients. By then, 6 of the 8 zinnias were dead. So I deadheaded all the blooms and replanted three of them that still had some new leaves. One more died later. Sigh.

Since then, the other two recovered. The yellow was going strong in the first place. It was the only bloom in its pot to still have new leaves, while it was almost gone case for the peach zinnia (it didn't have any flowers by then so I couldn't remember what was the color of its flowers). Took a really long time, but here it is, somewhat recovered. Ok, it wasn't my effort. It really was going to die at one point, so I moved it to the wall, where the incessant rain seems to have perked it up.

This is a very painful lesson learnt. I felt really bad for killing the zinnias with my lack of knowledge.