Not Quite Free - a case of the ooh shineeez!

Succulents + Silver = Sigh.

If you’ve read any of my postings since September 2012, you might have picked up on my expanding love affair with succulent plants. Thinking back I’d have to say it really started with the sad aloe plant that I inherited when I moved into the previous apartment.  Poor poor aloe, it sat neglected in a corner for who knows how long, slowly shrinking back towards the soil in the dim light. Not wanting to witness a plant death in slow motion I took responsibility for it and the little dude perked up after being moved to a sunnier spot and eventually repotted. 

  The apartment garden expanded again with the acquisition of a tiny fuzzy plant from a stand at the Harvard Square farmers market.  It expanded again to include a striped zebra plant I stumbled upon in the humid corner of a greenhouse. 

Zebra plant in summer sun

But the succulent container garden craze really took off in September 2012, after I got some from a friend's wedding centerpiece.  As a result I started looking around the web for tips on how to grow succulents, and that led to creative ways to display them in planters.  Enter the silver.  

I'm not the only one to adore this idea of combining succulents in silver containers, I think I actually cooed when I first saw it. 

via multiple sites on the interwebs

I've seen this same image of succulents in old silver champagne glasses here, here, and here.  Google it, you'll see, it is popular.  So whoever thought of it first, kudos, and thanks for sharing it, and thanks for giving me a reason to prowl the thrift stores looking for cheap silver-plate containers.  Back in September 2012 I went to a yard sale, not very common in Cambridge, but I found some silver cups in dire need of a new direction in life.  This where the not-quite-free part comes in, shhhh, they were $1 each.

I couldn't fit any of my existing succulents into the small mouths of these cups, so I got some other plants from the 'terrarium plants' section of Pemberton Farms.  The teensy plant pots had no labels and the one person working there couldn't tell me what they were. Exciting! Mystery plants.

Even after the move to a new city, the silver cups are still serving as planters, shiny shiny tiny planters.  More on that in another post.

Happy not-quite-freestyling.