It’s early March up here in the Kingdom. This time of year it’s still winter, but we do get hints that spring really may arrive at some point.

Today is one of those days. Although it’s almost 40°F outside, it is raining steadily. The snowpack, what little we have this year, is taking a hit, and the snowmobile folks see the end of their season closing in.

Seeing as this was going to be an inside kind of day, I thought I’d take a shot at separating and repotting some plants Wife brought home with her from Maine last week. Her Mom finally passed on after suffering for too long, and while some of these plants were hers, others were provided by friends. Keeping them going seems the right thing to do.

In order to get at the pots and wherewithal needed for the repotting, I moved the cars out of the garage and onto the driveway.  The garage is pretty full in the winter.

I collected all of the various planters and terracotta pots not in use, and brought them into our kitchen, which doubles as a potting shed when needed. Some of them were still a bit grungy from last year, so a bit of scrubbing was needed. They cleaned up well.

I think there are enough. The basket seems to have five different plants and the plan for the philodendron is to break that into two plants. It’s root-bound. We’re thinking that once it’s separated, we’ll keep one of them and give the other to one of our sons to go along with a spider plant we gave him a few months ago, which is still going strong.

Aside from the philodendron, I’ve not much of a clue as to the identity of any of the other plants. My thing is vegetable gardening- if it’s not edible, it’s not in my wheelhouse. I did find an Android app last summer to try and correct my flora identification deficiencies. It’s called PlantNet. I ran photos of each of the plants through it and was informed that the basket includes Primrose, Flaming Katy, Polka-Dot Plant, Peace Lily and a Bamboo Palm. The app provided these identifications with widely varying percentages of accuracy. 

With plants and planters at hand, and now ready to perform the repotting, the only thing needed was to find the bag of Pro-Mix potting soil. It took a bit, but I did find it and hauled it into the kitchen. The bag made a funny sound when I dropped it on the tile floor.

It was frozen solid. I guess this exercise will have to wait. It’s still winter, after all.

Updated: Monday, March 8th

The potting soil thawed, and the work completed.