I’m afraid the plants in my little home office tend to get neglected — I work all over the house and in the shed, so I may only be in there once a week (it’s where I record the podcast, so it’s primarily set up for that and file storage right now). I’m slowly transitioning towards low-water plants in that room, because anything else, I tend to forget to water enough, and thereby kill.
So Friday, when I was feeling immensely stir-crazy after a month of not leaving the house, I put on my mask and ducked over to Good Earth Greenhouse, in nearby Forest Park, to pick up a succulent for that room. Just breathing the plant-laden air made me feel better. Of course, it’s almost impossible to just buy one little succulent — I considered all kinds of other plants, but in the end, I succumbed to just one more plant, a lovely hellebore perennial.
It’s very early for garden stores to have hellebores, but Good Earth is ahead of the game. Later in the season, by mid-March or so, there’ll be lots of varieties in many garden stores, and of course, you can order them online as well. But it was a treat seeing these there!
I didn’t actually repot the hellebore — I just dropped the plastic pot into a cachepot (a pretty pot with no hole for drainage). Cachepots are perfect for this kind of thing, because my plan is to just enjoy the hellebore in my office for a month or two, and then, as soon as the soil has warmed up enough to work outside, I’ll be digging a hole and transplanting it into the garden. With a little luck and care (and watering religiously the first season), there’s a good chance it’ll perennialize and come back year after year.
I also took the dead plants out of my office. Looking better! 
(The little ferny thing under glass is faux, from Target. Nice to mix a few of those in if you’re struggling to keep green things alive!)
