In all my excitement I didn't take a dramatic before picture (which would have included some ants running around the black tray when we first picked it up). Instead I suggest you look at the picture below, but imagine it covered with hard water sedimentation all around the black tray and about two inches up along the green pot. You can still see a few small flakes clinging stubbornly to the side.
The mineral deposits came off pretty quickly with hot water and vigorous brushing in the shower, but all the moving around for cleaning made me glad I wasn't trying to lift this thing by myself. It's huge!
To give you some sense of scale the green planter is 21 inches high, 21 inches wide at the top, and the walls are 1.5 inches thick. If it were plastic it would be lightweight, easy to move, and far less awesome because it would be a bucket with a hole in the bottom. It is, however, glazed ceramic, as is the black tray underneath it, and thus worth bartering food-for-moving-to-my-house in order to own it. Does it still count as free? People who frequent garden centers know that large ceramic planters can be expeeeeensive. I'd peg this one at $60+ when new, quite a find!
Here is the finished setup, with the green planter settled into its corner by the window.
Sharp-eyed readers may notice that technically this qualifies as an update to the 'evolution of a living room corner' series.
Below is a previous incarnation of this corner (note the different plant):
And in case you've forgotten the earlier image here is the corner now, with the large royal palm (?) tree, some Haworthia succulents, a jade plant, an orchid, and a reading lamp. The palm tree has been in this spot for a while, but in a plain black plastic planter which is rather meh when compared to the new shiny green monster pot.
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| Welcome to the jungalow! |
Happy freestyling and summer gardening.