Pure Chocolate Launch Party

Speaking of chocolate...

This coming Tuesday night at 7:30 at Bitter Sisters Brewery in Addison, Texas, my wife is having her book party for her second novel in the Chocoverse series, Pure Chocolate.

She'll be there reading an excerpt from her novel as well as signing copies of her book which can be preordered through Interabang Books.

Yelibelly Chocolates will also be out there doing a hands on truffle rolling demonstration and helping to put together a chocolate and beer pairing, available at the bar.

Top it off with some free cake and you're sure to have a great time.

Some plants Just Don’t Look Real

So we went all around Addison today and placed post card sized fliers about Amber's upcoming book launch party, signing, and chocolate related event.

One of the places we stopped at was 84 Point Coffee off of Midway Road. At first I though the plant must be a fake since it looked pretty unbelievable and it looked like it was just put on top of some coffee beans.

After looking around for a little bit though, as Amber took pictures of her coffee, the flier, and bookmarks we had with us, I began to realize that the rest of the plants seemed to be real enough.  Then I saw bits of it had turned brown and there were marks on it that wouldn't have be put on a fake plant even if they were trying to make it look authentic.

After a quick search I figure it's most likely a variety of haworthia, probably herbacea.  Yeah, I've never heard of such a thing before either but it seems to be related to aloe plants.  Those spikes feel more like rubber, thus my initial thought that the plant was probably a fake.

I had a short conversation with a coworker recently about how terrible fake plants are in an office.  They do the opposite of what real plants do.  They sit there, collect dust, and smell funny.  She had been in an office where the office manager just loved to get more and more fake plants to put everywhere.  When they finally closed that office the fake plants were so dusty you could see the clouds they gave off as they were trying to get rid of them.  It wasn't good.

This is one of many plants I will probably never get but it was neat to look at it for a while sitting in a coffee shop.  Go get some coffee and see if you agree.

Cacao Nodes Turning Red

Really not sure why this happens still. Red (named because all the leaf nodes were red from the start) I figured was just how that variety grew.  But now I'm wondering if it's how it's growing instead of what is growing.

This picture is of one of the cacao trees that traveled over to the next cubical to be cared for.  Only this last leaf so far has the distinct red nodes.  The rest of the leaves are just plain green.  Maybe a little darker at those points but certainly not a different color.

As you can see though the traveling plants are doing just fine as well.  New leaves coming in all the time and a nice color to them.  There is no gnat colony over there though so I guess that's a plus as far as worrying about them.  I've been thinking about getting this one taken care of.  They're not really bothering me but I don't want them to become an office nuisance.

Flowering Beans

The green bean plants are finally flowering.  I thought it was making some flowers earlier but they turned out to be new green shoots from the main stalk.  In a day or so I should be able to pollinate the flowers and get the beans to start forming.  This one is very much a vining variety.  It keeps sprawling out. The other beans from the same packet though seem to be growing upright.  Not sure exactly what this means about my beans but so far none of my plants seem to be uniform in variety.

The mister I ordered to help out the orchids never arrived and the seller isn't responding to messages.  So it's back to the search for a mister that will help keep the humidity up for these guys.  Fortunately Amazon is probably going to get me a refund of the cost since there was a problem.  We'll see if it actually happens though, not finalized.

Thinking of planting a low ground cover in the pots at some point but not sure what to plant.  The trees of course aren't quite ready for that anyway but it's still something I want to think about and plan.  A low growing shade loving herb might be good since it's going to be indoors.  Maybe thyme or mint?  Any suggestions are welcome.