I think the curly variety is called "Jenny" or "Nancy" or something like that?? Mine looks as curly as the momma plant in the photo. Maybe because it is large it doesn't curl as much? I notice really curly babies. Woofie, if I end up with a girl-plant, I will send you babies. For now, I see no reproducing. Darn it! Maybe she is just waiting for a new home to spread her toes first? I will get right on it! Right now she is just trying to warm up from where I put her for the winter. Now she has a new home in front of a sunny window. Please @woofie, please ask me again later as I am apt to forget.

To help get this on topic here is a Database photo with information on "Bonnie" ( I KNEW it was a girl's name!! )

Curly Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum 'Bonnie')

Hey, you got it! Thanks for the information. You guys are all wonderful! I wish I didn't have to do so many chores today! I would stay on the computer all day.
Leda
P.S. Take care of that beautiful husky, I need to find a coat for my "little skinny butt" Italian Greyhound, the dang wind is picking up again here in the Front Range of Colorado.
Leda

Oh, wow, Cheryl! That would be great! I found some reasonably priced starts on ebay, but I'm afraid the weather is much too cold to risk trying to have anything shipped this time of year. But Bonnie is soooo cute! And, sigh, I took inventory of the damage out back. Sigh again. I lost nearly all of my spiders! Including my solid green one. Rats!! Gotta start paying closer attention and turning on the heater when things get so very cold. Usually, that room stays at least a few degrees above freezing, but I think someone (with lots of fur and a bad habit of not closing doors completely) may have left the door slightly cracked open. Oh well, better a freeze dried plant than a freeze dried puppy!

Leda,

When I worked in a chemical factory, they taught us "how to fall". Ideally, we land on our butt since that is best padded. Skull, elbows and wirst are not the best thins to slam directly onto a hard surface. Also, the head has the farthest to fall and leverage gives it more speed if you go down stiffly like a tree.

You have to think about it ahead of time, or even practice, so that when you "start to go down" your body knows the right things to do.

Don't dance around trying to stay up.
Don't go stiff or land on your nose, an elbow or a wrist.

DO LOOK DOWN which bends your neck and protects your skull.
Imagine the line from your butt to the ground.
Bend your knees, slump limply, twist a little ...
... let your butt take the shortest path straight down.
Ideally your torso would fall straightish rather than pivoting like a tree.

The twist lets you hit with one butt-cheek and then fall to one side, instead of dropping backwards like a tree and whacking the back of your head onto the floor.

This can even look look graceful, as if you just decided to sit abruptly on the floor, or take a nap.

When I was in a spinal rehab, they also taught to say "falling" calmly, allegedly to alert the PTs that you were falling. I actually think it was to give us the illusion of control and make it less scary.

I had GBS, not a spinal injury, luckily! I got mostly better.

When DH's Physical Therapist hear, "I'm going down!" from my 6'1", 230 lb husband, they say their heart skips a beat. Fortunately, he falls slowly and calmly and they are able to bring him upright every time,

When I donated blood, the nurse looked at me and said: "If you start to faint, I can help ease you down a little, but you're mostly ON YOUR OWN".

I'm not a lightweight either.

Rick,
Thanks for the information. I think I will practice it! I know when the blood pressure meds were too high I found myself on the floor in a nice little heap with 3 dogs licking my face. What you told me makes a lot of sense!

The last time I fell, I was on the stairs and I remember my left foot hit the cement floor at a high speed. The big toe was swollen, black and blue for quite a while. I was too stubborn to go to the doctor but the bunion disappeared. Now if only I could do the bunion on the other foot.

Rick, glad you mostly recovered from your condition! Dave, my hubby, donates blood too. Here, they have him sit in a recliner. When I worked in a blood clinic, a long time ago, recliners were used there too.

Ow ow OWWW! Falling down stairs is second only to falling into moving machinery for least favorite things to do. I think I would rather have an eye poked than break a neck ... I only have the one neck, you see. i think stairs are a conspiracy by young, healthy people.

Good luck with taking fewer dives!

Seriously, the rule of thumb is pretty good: let your butt go straight down, and nothing needs to flail around or dent the floorboards. I usually cheat and put an arm down to break the fall, which does risk a wrist sprain, but makes me feel like I'm doing more to control the fall.

Probably that's why they taught us to use the fake-casual "falling!" announcement, so we would feel in control. The first time I fell by surprise while mostly paralyzed, I let out such a high-pitched, loud "WHOOOPS!" that a whole gym-full of more experienced people had good belly-laughs.

While I was in the rehab, I was the LUCKIEST guy there. Other people were permanently paralyzed with broken backs, or had degenerative MS. I had a good prognosis.

I was considered 90% likely to recover 90-100%, like most GBS patients (Guillain-Barre syndrome). Unfortunately I beat those odds so that I was "the other 10%". Usually being "the other 10%" is an honor, but in that case, an inconvenience. It's really minor compared to any real handicap.

My brother, a big and strong 6' guy, was just 29 when he fell backwards from a ladder and did break his neck. He died 10 days later but was totally paralyzed for those ten days. It was all due to a shoelace that came untied. You can bet my kids kept their shoelaces tied! Now I use the sneakers with Velcro closures for myself.

Sympathy! Going out young seems so sad.

I was in a safety meeting in my current job (an office job) when some young bozos were chortling about a safety memo that tried to reverse a current trend towards slips and falls in the factory area.

You don't know what's real and really important until it happens to you.

"Too soon old, too late wise!"

Rick,
If only I had known we would get old(er) in this Tri-Level plus basement. My dad wants us to buy a Ranch but here laundry facilities are almost always in the basement or they are too expensive. I don't want to be house poor or if we downsize, it would be in a "not great" neighborhood.

Arlene,
I sincerest sympathy for the grief of your brother. I am no stranger to grief. When the kids were young, Dave's mother (of 7) taught me a French knot. It came in very handy. I would not know how to describe it though so stick to your Velcros.

I have no plans to go young. My prognosis is pretty good. If you are saying condolences for our son, thank you. But ... I wish I knew then, what I know now!

I used to be the world's worst when it came to overwatering but years ago I changed my potting medium to a very chunky, fast draining mix (a combination of potting soil and lots of orchid bark mix, the type that has wood chips, perlite and charcoal ... drains really well and doesn't hold a lot of extra water to cause root rot.

Yep, the curly version is Chlorophytum comosum 'Bonnie'. SongofJoy has a great photo in the database:

I just laughed because someone gave me one and i couldn't figure out what i was doing wrong that it kept curling up! Now I know!

Lin,

Last year when I bought the violets on eBay, I thought I should let them adapt to the new conditions for a few weeks. The violets came from various vendors with different soil mixtures but I watered them all the same. Bad mistake, I learned to repot them immediately. I am not one of those people who can stick their fingers in the soil and feel dampness so I had to vary the African Violet Society's soil formula which was 1/3 Pearlite, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 sphagnum peat moss. My formula is all of those listed plus some organic African Violet soil in a 1/4 each ratio. The African Violet soil lets me see how damp things are. I also use the weight to help me know if a plant is wet or dry. I have a hydrometer too.

My husband bought me a soil mix at the hardware store that has bark in it. I was wondering why so you have answered that question for me. I use larger pieces of the bark to keep the leaves from touching the soil.

That is a nice picture of the spider plant. I need to look around here more and check the file photos.

Arlene, your experience with thinking something was wrong with your spider plant really made me laugh.

Leda: I should have been more exact ... I didn't use the bark mix for African Violets or Gesneriads, for those plants I used potting soil with a lot of extra perlite. I do use the potting soil/orchid bark mix for every other container plant I grow though.

Lin,
I understood you, sorry I was off on another tangent again.

Where do you get orchid bark? Is it made of orchid bark or called orchid bark because it is for orchids? Is it expensive? What does the charcoal do?

Thank you for your generous help,
Leda

>> I changed my potting medium to a very chunky, fast draining mix (a combination of potting soil and lots of orchid bark mix,



For a long time, pure "orchid bark" was the only way I could find evergreen bark that was clean and dry. The price is about the same as shredded $5 bills, but it drains faster and lasts longer.

Then I found a Lowes that carried "Fine Pine Bark Nuggets", around $4.20 for 2 cubic feet.
Also, a fancy nursery that had evergreen bark SHREDS that were clean and very nice, but around twice the price of Lowes bark nuggets.

I screen them with 1/4 galvanized hardware cloth, but I need to buy some 1/8" mesh. I try to get rid of bark dust and powder, then add just a little peat-based potting mix, for water retention.

Leda:

Horticultural Charcoal doesn't offer any nutritional value (and it's not the same as the type of charcoal that we use for barbequing, which contains chemicals that kill plants) but I believe it helps aerate the soil and also with drainage and the chunks of bark also help with soil aeration and drainage as well.

I always had a heavy hand at watering when I was younger and I killed a lot of plants. It was with trial and error and reading a couple of gardening books that got me to using horticultural charcoal mixed with my soil to help with drainage and keep the plant roots from retaining so much moisture. Nowadays I just buy the orchid mix that contains perlite and charcoal.

Now that I'm older, I'm really bad about letting my plants go a long while before watering but I guess our high humidity here in Florida helps.

Here's some information on horticultural charcoal:

http://www.paghat.com/charcoal...