Like many people trapped inside this pandemic winter, I have been craving gardening, and one way that manifests is with a sudden resurgence of interest in house plants.
Now, my difficulty with houseplants has always been my forgetting to water them, but I have a new theory — if I’m so harried that I can’t take the time to water plants once a week, then I am TOO BUSY, and must slow down with work. Maybe I can turn it into a morning meditation? We’ll see whether this theory and accompanying plan actually has any effect on my ability to keep the house plants alive, but either way, I’ve picked up a few more recently.
Of course, then I run into another problem — restricted sun. I love having a Victorian with a wraparound porch, but that same wraparound porch means that half of my first floor barely gets any sun — maybe an an hour of late afternoon light makes it past the porch roof. My sunny back room tends to get jammed full with tropicals that live on the back deck once it warms up, and come in for the winter, so where does that leave house plants?
Well, I tuck them in here and there, but I’ve started looking to the walls recently. I have mixed feelings about plastic pots — on the one hand, they do tend to retain moisture, so that helps a little with the watering issue, as long as the plants are ones that can tolerate sitting in wet soil some of the time. But then again, plastic, which mostly I tend to avoid for both aesthetics and environmental concern.
I decided to try these hanging pots, though, as they seemed quite cleverly designed, and plastic is also lighter than ceramic, so seemed like it might be a better option for my wall. This is Umbra’s Floralink — it comes as a set of three for $20 (link in comments), and you can use them for other things than plants, of course — office supplies, bathroom items, etc. Sturdy white plastic, brass hardware that lets you move them around on the wall, hang them from each other, etc.
You could build a big wall of them if you really wanted to commit, but I’m trying to restrain myself from going completely hog-wild with the houseplants, so I’ve just started with two variegated versions of fairly standard epipremnum: “Pearls and Jade” pothos & “Snow Queen” devil’s ivy. (I *think* Pearls and Jade is top left, but not positive.) Both found on Amazon, because I’m also still trying to resist the urge to go to garden stores all the time…
These windows do let in a lot of light, but they’re above the mudroom and a tight stair, so I haven’t been able to figure out great places to put plants here before. Sometimes I sit herbs on the little half-wall. But I’m thinking taking advantage of wall space like this may be the way to go.
In theory, these plants should grow and grow, and I can use little transparent clips to attach them to the wall, climbing around — eventually, they’ll get too big for these containers, I suppose, and I’ll have to come up with something else, but that’s probably a long time away. A problem for another year. 
(If you look carefully at the last picture, near the cat, you’ll see a little bit of pothos that came apart when I was repotting, so I stuck it in a vase with some water, and will let it go for a little while, growing more roots, and then I’ll pot it up on its own somewhere…)
