The Color Purple Cast of Plants
Yesterday Amazon delivered this plant stand that I ordered for Gina (top) and Rose (bottom). Our front porch faces Northeast. The porch gets sunlight for just a short period of time, but the days are getting longer and the mornings are much hotter. Rose was getting sunburned. So I moved them from a table in the middle of the porch to this plant stand on the side that doesn’t get direct sunlight.
A money tree was one of the first plants I bought during the pandemic and “Sylvia” was dead by the end of 2020. I bought another one and named her Gina. Not too much thought put into the names of either plant; those are just the names the came to me when I saw them.
In March of this year I had to put Gina out. I almost put her down, but green means life and I didn’t want to throw away “money”. So I told her she was going to the spa (the porch) for treatment. I didn’t tell her how ugly she looked, I just hoped “the spa” would work and she would recover.
She is recovering beautifully. I think it’s the humidity that has her thriving. When I cut off the dried up leaves back in March, there wasn’t much left to her.
Rose had a similar problem. She was dried up with pale green leaves. I cute off the dried leaves, and with the brighter light she is growing back in the dark pink hue which made me name her Rose in the first place.
Left: Gina in March of 2022
Middle: Rose needed a dress to match Gina’s
Right: All happy now
So the plant stand I got yesterday made me buy a new plant. After I put the stand together and moved Gina and Rose, I wanted the pots to match.
I went to Lowes first because I knew exactly what I wanted if it was still there. I was in luck. I went in for a Raven ZZ in a beige pot and found it.
The hues of a ZZ (Zamioculcas) go frombright green to dark green to purple black. I have a green ZZ and only bought it because I thought it would turn dark. I preferred the darker one. The one I had remained bright green and while I longed for the darker one, I DID NOT need to buy another plant. So much for that.
This morning I decided to make three plants out of the two. Celie & Nettie - sisters from the movie The Color Purple and Olivia who was the daughter of Celie but spent most of her upbringing with Nettie. Celie is all green, Nettie is the Purple/Black and Olivia is a combination of the two. So appropriately RE-named.
My green ZZ originally had the name Zuri which means beautiful in Swahili. The names Celie & Nettie belonged to two other plants I have on the fireplace mantle. Their plant names are now Tia & Tamera (Mowry) because they are twins.
Meet the rest of The Color Purple Cast of plants, Shug Avery and Miz Sophia
Mary Agnes aka Squeak didn’t make it and hasn't been replaced yet.