A few things about succulents: let me walk you through some succulent know-how
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Thanks to the author [Qianxue] for theoriginal submissionsharing
Submission date: April 8, 2018
Edited and compiled by: Encyclopedia Jun
Location: Changsha, Hunan
One. Fate
People say 25 is the best age for having children; by then most people have already walked into marriage, wearing the label of devoted wife and loving mother, while at this time I had returned to the company I used to curse every day, cursing its exploitation, cursing its arrogance. Work long enough and you carry some emotion with you, especially when I am still the great Nezha with the Qiankun Ring on my head, the Huntian Silk around my arms, the Wind-Fire Wheels under my feet and the Fire-Tipped Spear in my hand.
League of Legends? Come on, I'll carry you all into the trash heap, a professional teammate-seller for 20 years, 2900 games of noob Lux, just asking if you're scared;
How could gaming do without Zhu Xian, endorsed by Xiao Qi (Richie Jen)? Focused for 10 years on supporting as a Tianyin, on the road of screwing over teammates, plus our family's carry Lao Qi (another bestie, who mainly plays damage classes in games and is no slouch in a fight), I walked further and further;
In the oh-so-familiar company, two more arrived, Dou2 and Xiaohua appearing so suddenly, and so we slowly entered each other's lives. When the girls in the office gather together, they always bring a different kind of fun to life. Dou2, a girl unruffled by anything, always guards her own pure land amid the surging waves. Xiaohua is a workplace newbie, carrying all the common workplace afflictions; when quiet she wants something grand, and when it is grand she wants something plain. While I was fiercely battling away at LoL, Dou2 was growing a bunch of cute things on the balcony - succulents
Xiaohua lay diagonally on the sofa, leisurely playing on her phone. Quiet, lovely times - these did not quite belong to me; what does not suit me ultimately still does not suit me. Once again I left the company I had cursed for several years.
Two. Love
This time I headed straight for Qingdao: draft beer, seafood, the sea, eagerly rushing to embrace the blue sea and blue sky. And of course love - for love, or maybe I do not even know if it was because of love. Love has always been something ethereal, or maybe I just wanted to covet that little bit of etherealness. Girls who play LOL, watch all kinds of gossip in Zhu Xian, and play Fantasy Westward Journey - perhaps they are the most dreamy inside. The life I wanted was about to begin under this stretch of blue sky. Maybe I was still too childish; when one is alone in Qingdao, love cannot always be one's armor. I began a life of planting flowers and grass, filling the quiet times around me.
I kept growing my flowers, occasionally buying a few fresh flowers and Dou2's former cute things - succulents
Some things you cannot stop once you start. At first I only wanted to buy some succulents to grow alongside the flowers and plants, casually buying a few common ones. Flowers are always gorgeously and freely blooming, while succulents are always low-key and slow. When the flowers fade, the succulents remain silent. Some stunning moments always linger unwittingly in the heart. Before I knew it, everything around me seemed a bit out of step with me, and I began to study succulents, going to succulent forums, Tieba, Weibo. Only then did I discover a world beyond the world. Maybe I had found what I wanted, something real and solid.
Flattened like a pancake? Grown into a tree? Green?
I began to be unsatisfied with that one balcony in the dorm, and my eyes turned to the landlord's rooftop. I began to bring out my tomboy skills, building stands on the rooftop to grow them outdoors. From the fourth floor of the dorm to the fifth floor of the landlord's rooftop, nearly a hundred pots of succulents were moved bit by bit up to the rooftop, watching the succulents change their forms under outdoor growing conditions. Every day they bring you surprises.
Because of obstructions, the landlord's rooftop had no sun after three or four in the afternoon. After a month of outdoor growing there was some improvement, but I was still not satisfied.
The vegetable garden at the family home in the Hunan countryside seemed pretty good? Go claim a plot of land? Would I get beaten by the old man and the Old Buddha (my mom)? After all, in just three months of falling into the hobby, I had squandered a month's wages on it.
Three. Succulents
A new leaf
In September 2017, on a whim I bought 200 peach egg leaves, wanting to create a stretch of peach blossom forest, and from then on fell into the deep pit of succulents, and the late-stage "cancer" kind at that
A tree in bloom
Flower stalks - these things always pop out of succulents unexpectedly
Even a stray dog running over to me can make me cheerful for a long time.
The little local dog at the company gave birth to a litter of puppies. Besides being cute, there is also the difference between the buyer's show and the seller's show, displayed to the fullest
Seller's show
Buyer's show
The above is like the difference between the succulents I grow and the succulents the masters grow. Say more and it is all tears, but they are also what showed me what a comeback means, what the tenacity of life means.
Kalanchoe luciae (Flapjacks), over three months, went from a big cabbage to a stunning little princess
Lotus
The flattened Echeveria chihuahuaensis
The Echeveria 'Allen' I once utterly despised, at one point wanting to throw it away; I, who photograph mindlessly, can never capture its comeback beauty.
I heard beheading can propagate them, so fine, I just wanted to try it, and Echeveria 'Pretty in Pink' became my "guinea pig"
After forcefully separating the head from the stem, the stem dried up on me at a speed visible to the naked eye, leaving two heads that I put in a pot to fend for themselves. Regardless of whether they had roots, I threw them outside to grow outdoors, and two months later found they had gotten much fatter
Chocolate line
Echeveria 'Agnes Rose'
Echeveria 'Guanghan Gong' (Moon Palace)
Echeveria 'Xiaoqiu Rose' (Little Ball Rose)
Echeveria 'Xiaoqiu Rose' variegated
Occasionally I keep in touch with those two and with Ben Qi far away in Wuhan. Dou2, unruffled as ever, married her Monkey King; Xiaohua, with all her noise and restlessness, went back to a small town; Ben Qi and I often kill and burn and flirt with guys without restraint in the Zhu Xian game. Life really does wear away our passion, and all of oneself is exchanged for a phrase: quiet, lovely times.
Four. Migration
In December, the cold winter arrived as promised, and fearless of death I moved nearly a hundred pots of succulents back to the family home in the Hunan countryside. On the way, quite a few succulents that had not yet settled and rooted came out on their own. After more than ten hours I returned to the countryside, and a small portion were simply too horrible to look at. Without stopping, I settled them in: repotting those that needed repotting, blowing off soil from those that needed it, finally giving them a stable home.
Five. A father's love
On the day the succulents were moved home, the old man came back from outside and his jaw dropped at the sight of nearly a hundred pots of succulents, but he said nothing. His legs were not convenient, so he directed me to find bricks and suitable boards around the front and back of the house, take up the hoe, and bustle about setting up the succulent stands.
I told him these things fear autumn frost and winter rain and snow, so he had already thought about how to conveniently cover them with boards and plastic film.
During the days the succulents were grown outdoors in the family vegetable garden, I heard from my mom that on sunny mornings the old man would early on lift off the boards and plastic film, and when he came back from outside in the evening the first thing he would do was put the boards and plastic film back on, caring for them even more meticulously than I did.
I scrolled through the photo album on my phone and surprisingly could not find a single photo of the old man, only one from when he was in the army
Six. Heading off
This should be a long journey
Over New Year's Day I went gallivanting around Yunnan with my younger sister, went to that city to see the legendary cheat-mode region, and also visited the home of the poison master to see his succulents. I really, really wanted to bring all the beauty I saw home.
After gallivanting in Yunnan for a few days I returned to Hunan, and my heart was even more set on succulents. After careful consideration, I resolutely quit my nine-to-five job, "exiled" myself to Yunnan, rented a small courtyard, and began my little life of growing succulents.
Just before flying to Yunnan, my sister tossed me a WeChat friend card. Mm, a so-called "old fellow" everyone talks about.
When "the old fellow" heard I was going to Yunnan to rent a courtyard to grow flowers, and later when I asked him to help by making a trip to Yunnan, he agreed without saying anything, and on March 31 flew with me straight to Dali, Yunnan.
After the plane landed, that day we stayed one night at the hotel arranged by the landlady sister, and the next day went straight to see the small courtyard to be rented. Just as I had imagined, the small courtyard satisfied both me and "the old fellow" (here please, Encyclopedia Jun, blur out the landlady sister and the old man, thank you)
Here I have to mention the family of the landlady sister of the small courtyard - the super nice kind. Before I arrived in Yunnan, I had been in contact with the landlady sister on WeChat the whole time, and she patiently answered every question. In between, several groups of people wanted to come see their courtyard, and she politely declined them all, even telling her old father, do not rent the courtyard to anyone else, someone has reserved it. This got the old man curious - curious just what kind of tenant this was......
In the blink of an eye it has already been three days since moving into the small courtyard. These past few days I have been with "the old fellow" improving some of the facilities in the courtyard, step by step tidying the courtyard into the way I want it. Once the courtyard is finished, I will update the seventh piece of Succulent Two.Seven Matters. If you like this article, just move your fingers and give it a like!
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This article has beenexclusively authorizedby the author to the WeChat public account: Succulent Encyclopedia (ID: duoroubaike). The content of the article does not represent the views or stance of the public account
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