Prayer Plants and Spider Mites

I have a terrarium set up that is full of some of my favorite plants sitting in pots above a layer of rocks and water.  Most of the plants are prayer plants, but I also have a nerve plant and a black velvet alocasia in there.  I noticed that my newest plant, which was a White Star Calathea that I bought on my birthday, was not looking too good.  I saw bugs on it, but I told myself they were probably just harmless springtails because I really didn't want pests.  Well, upon closer inspection, I saw webbing and knew I was dealing with spider mites.  😰  

I removed each plant to carefully inspect them.  As far as I could tell, the White Star had the most pests and damage.  I saw some mites on my Vittata, but thankfully the other plants seemed okay despite how close together they are when in the terrarium.  I sprayed down each plant to remove as many of the mites as possible.  I then sprayed each leaf with Neem oil.  I returned the plants to the terrarium and am hoping for the best.  I thought about separating the two I definitely saw mites on, but I don't have a good spot to isolate them, I don't want to risk the mites spreading to my other plants, and it's likely the mites were already spreading to the other plants in the terrarium so I am trying to contain the mites to just those plants in the terrarium.  

I realize that I may not have the time or tools necessary to eliminate these pests, so in case I lose all the plants in the terrarium, I decided to take pictures of them to remember how beautiful they are.  I adore the beautiful patterns, variations, and colors of these plants.  I guess at this point my plan is to pull the plants out each week and spray them down with Neem oil.  Hopefully that is enough!  I especially don't want to lose my White Fusion.

This Manjula Pothos is not in the terrarium, but since I had my camera out and was already taking pictures of some of my favorite plants, I decided to get some pictures of the newest, gorgeous leaves on my manjula.  

 

Playing with Pen

Kira found this pen under the side table and had some fun with it.  At some point she left it unattended and Arien kinda lost her mind over it.  I haven't seen Arien so crazy over a toy.  It was adorable!  And maybe a little scary because she was going nuts!  Hahaha!

Perfectly Posed Pretty Kitties

Watch out world!  I'm getting back to blogging!  Summers are always busy, and I always need some time to get caught up on more important things, so blogging ends up being an afterthought.  But I'm making so much progress on projects and thought I'd spend some time getting blogs posted.  😊

I really, really loved getting these pictures of the cats.  It has been so long since they were my subjects.  They were confused by the attention at first and kept walking up to me.  But eventually they ignored me and started playing.  

Happy 3rd Birthday to Arien

We've had Arien for 3 years now!  Actually, her real gotcha day was Tuesday, September 6, but I'm just now getting these posted.  I really love how much Arien has grown and matured over these last 3 years.  She is such a sweet girl who definitely still has a crazy streak in her to keep me on my toes.  She still loves to jump onto my shoulders as I make my coffee or wash dishes.  She does spend a lot of time sleeping during the day, but she often chooses to sleep in her hammock in the office if that's where I am to work.  If she instead chooses to sleep in our bedroom during the day, then whenever she wakes up in the afternoon, she finds me and rubs against my legs and begs for some cuddles.  

The biggest change this past year is that Arien decided Joe was a nice guy to cuddle and ever since then, I think she actually prefers him.  Which I admit does sometimes make me jealous since she's only alive thanks to me hand-raising her.  But I generally love seeing her climbing up Joe's chest and head butting him before he finally pushes her to lay down where she stays purring and drooling on him.  😂  Whenever Joe or I reject Arien's advances for cuddles, she goes to Kira who always happily gives her a bath.  Typically about half way through this, Arien gets upset at Kira for licking her hair the wrong way and then Kira gets upset at Arien for not appreciating the effort and after a bit of fighting, Arien decides she should check again to see if the humans will cuddle her.

Arien seriously is such a great cat!  I'm so glad that after my parents found her and realized they were stuck with her, I didn't wait for them to find someone else to take her and instead decided to hand-raise her myself.  💓

Check out the videos at the bottom!  The first is from about a week after I brought her home!  The second was a couple weeks later.

 

Curious Cats

These cats are so curious about anything new in the house.  Not much goes unnoticed.  I like how attentive they are because that generally means bugs don't last long as they are quickly found.