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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands

@passiflora.bsky.social

460 followers 290 following 370 posts

Founder of Maryland Area Gardening for the Environmentally Conscious (MAGEC) & general advocate for supportive native plant gardening communities Recently-disabled communications workaholic who loathes the term "brain fog" Too many books She/they

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Jan 24

I've been thinking about what I can add to the #nativeplants conversation on bluesky.

I think most of what I can contribute is from my experience starting a community of gardeners who really support each other.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Oct 1

I still exist - but have been flaring for ages. Cooler temperatures mean more ow but also more awake time and less fog, which bodes well, I hope.

Meanwhile, enjoy kid's-first-ren-faire photo.

Mid-elementary-aged child with shoulder length hair grins goofily from behind a turkey leg. He is outside, surrounded by greenery, people in renaissance garb, and heraldic flags.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 12

So far, this is the easiest and most effective way I've found to root Hoyas. It's a big glass vase I fill with a mix of leca and pon and put a bunch of different cuttings. Didn't think to take the pic until I'd moved half to pots. I fill to about 1/3 with water and don't let it go completely dry.

A short, wide glass vase filled with clay and volcanic rock substrate, with several chaotic Hoya cuttings in it.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 12

I have been putting together propagation boxes, which are basically clear plastic tote greenhouses. Mine have a lot of sustainably-sampled foraged native moss, and some tropical things I've bought. I'm hoping I can trade bits to increase box and future terrarium variety.

Here's a close up of a (maybe Harmony's Rockin' Robin?) red Rex Begonia baby with some Selaginella and Fittonia in a prop box.

Six little mossy-ferny Selaginella varieties in a prop box with homemade potting mix. They are orderly little mounds, like topiary.

Rarer, ranger, more selaginella in another prop box

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 12

Please enjoy your caturday. #catsofbluesky

Vakarinye, a long haired black cat, curled up on a pale green, yellow, and blue bedspread.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 11

I pretty regularly reply to Facebook marketplace listings in which folks are trying to sell or give away invasive non-native plant species to ask them not to. It doesn't often go anywhere, let alone result in a conversation that goes well, but it's nice when it does.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 11

The child was dismayed about this rhipsalis because it's another thing I will pay attention to that's not him.

But then I tickled him with it.

And had to continue until my arm just about fell off.

Blurry photo of a 9-year-old with his whole face anyone through the trailing tendrils of a rhipsalis plant.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 11

Bwahahahaha my A1C is 6! It hasn't been that low for years. ALMOST worth the horror of getting tests done to hear it. #type2diabetes

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 10

Would anyone like to do a weird seed pod etc exchange for #terrariums?

Would need to figure out how to sterilize them without destroying them before shipping to avoid spreading invasive species, but I've got these and sweet gum balls and more just rolling toward storm drains.

Cat hair: gratis.

The seed pod cluster thingy of the Magnolia grandiflora, or Southern Magnolia, photographed in my hand over a wood floor.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 10

Pretty turkey tail. I think. #trametesversicolor #polypores #fungusidentification

Close up image of a green, brown, ivory, and purple polypore.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 9

CUTE!

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 9

Ceiling shelf fungus and basement shelf fungus. #polypores #celestialbattle #decomposition

Close photo of tree bark with brown-green moss and two types of polypore on it - white on one side and gray-black on the other.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 9

I went for a walk in the woods with my family and without my cane or rollythingy, and I may be half dead, but I feel awesome about it.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

Breaking: 7 lb Vakka is now is now just about big spooning 18 lb Diddy. With tail blanketing.

I half hope to die happy before encountering the news again.

Small black cat curls around enormous creamsicle cat. Her (black) tail is draped over his haunches.

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

I shall endeavor to post them!

Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

... So this development is a balm to my much abraded heart in these times.

I'm honored to have been chosen as human to be present in case intervention was needed, too.

Close shot of black cat and orange cat's paws, touching.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

Didymus at a healthy weight is more than his younger sisters weight together, though, and is, well, orange. And Zhem is as jumpy as he used to be. And Vakka takes no sass from anyone. So Didymus has just been pinning the last three years. But Zhem seems to half consent to playing sometimes lately, &

Didymus, orange, left, pines for vakka, black, right, from closer proximity than had historically been allowed as she gazes out a window. There are maybe eight inches between them. This is a few months ago now.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

So when some months after we lost Hob we adopted a these bonded sisters, who'd spent half their nearly 3 years of life at the pound, we hoped they'd help Diddy heal. That's Vakarinye, dust sprite, on the left, and Zhemyna, tabby, on the right. After 3 years, they sometimes brave laps for pets.

2 small cats on a red blanket, long-haired black to the left and short haired table to the right. Tabby has a paw of the photographers outstretched hand.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

But Didymus took it especially hard and has basically tried, desperate, to make my spouse Gob's proxy. He was less frantic in his snuggles with Gob but still sometimes seems to try to inveigle himself under M's skin (or into his armpit) to hide.

Creamsicle cat sits on adult humans chest between said human and his laptop on a paisley recliner, dispensing perhaps uncomfortable amounts of affection.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

Hob died around 4-5 years ago and that is still what my kid thinks about whenever there is grief. He was the sort of cat we will all miss forever. He took care of us all in a way that made everyone who met him feel seen and loved.

Toddler asleep entangled with a very pleased cat who is enormous enough to probably still be bigger than the toddler, in a paisley recliner.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

Except with his friend, Hobgoblin, who I found emaciated and alone at a rural rest stop several years before and who was absolutely made of love.

Creamsicle cat grooms tabby and white cat with persian squished face. Both are long haired and improbably enormous.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

Didymus, orange, has been with us almost nine years. We adopted him as a nearly full grown kitten who'd been abandoned with his mother and sister into the care of a friend who was only briefly supposed to be pet sitting them. He was terrified of everything, especially kids. Eyes always like this.

The wide eyed face of a hyper vigilant creamsicle cat.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

This is happening right now, and it's a long-hoped-for moment between a couple of adopted cats with separate, sad histories of abandonment. #adoptdon'tshop #catsofbluesky #snuggling

On a yellow and blue floral bedspread, a black cat and a pale orange cat lie curled toward each other, slightly touching.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 7

Thank you! There's rubber sealant all over the wood inside and various other attempts to prevent mayhem. Still working out temperature and humidity, and will probably add more lights.

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 6

The plant cabinet is welcoming some epiphytic cacti. #epiphyllum #disocactus #rhipsalis #pseudorhipsalis #lepismium #kimnachia #selenicereus #schlumbergera #hatiora #pfeiffera

Large wood curio cabinet full of houseplants, mostly hoyas and epiphytic cacti

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Cassie 🌿 64c Piedmont Uplands @passiflora.bsky.social · Apr 5

Pictured: where @wearegonnafindout.bsky.social and I grew up and a lot of why we are who we are.

If you know a native plant person or other environmentalist in upstate NY, who might want to rent a place...

Small red clapboard and red brick cape cod house with a large yard, lots of trees, and water behind it.

The side of a red cape cod house shot from low in the field/forest next to it.

Canada geese stroll by a backyard lamp post with white pines and a huge silver maple behind them, and water beyond that.

A view of a large back yard sloping down to a lake-sized pond, with a strip of causeway holding a bike path beyond, and the mile-wide Mohawk River beyond that, with a wooded island in the middle of the river and a huge wooded nature preserve as far as the eye can see beyond that.

... Okay not much is clear beyond the bike path from this vantage, which follows the Erie Canal, but you can see it all from the second storey, especially.