Fiddle Leaf Figs: Week-by-Week

We mosied on over to the Florida Coast two weekends ago to visit my sister and her family – a seven hour drive. It was such an awesome trip; it always is. Besides corraling the eight kids under five that we have between us, it was pretty nice and relaxing. We didn’t do much besides hang out at home with the exception of an hour spent at a local carnival one evening where the kids rode on three tot rides. We paid a high $40 for a 30-second cruise on three joy rides…well, make that 30 seconds on two rides and about 15 on another. Fifteen because they shut ‘er down early because Sebastian freaked. Poor kid. We put them all on this little Nemo knock-off that went ‘round and ‘round and he was all smiles and giddiness…until the operator pushed the start button. Granted, we all were a tad surprised to see it zoom around and up and down in a small circle at much more than a leisurely swim. I was videoing him before the ride started to get in all that excitement and you can see the phone drop once the ride started and he did a 360 in mood. My sister though, videoed the entire ride so I grabbed a screenshot so we’d have something to laugh about after the fact…because during I really wanted to leap the fence with my helicopter mom hat on and snatch him outta there.
Far left. Like I said, poor kid. I’m hoping this is a phase because Anthony and I are both fans of thrill rides and I’d hate to not share that joy with this kid someday. What’s it called when you cure a paranoia through direct experience of the fear? You know, curing it by exposing the person to it along with something they don’t fear? I think I’ll put him next to me on a roller coaster with a handful of cotton candy someday… ;)

Anyway, we’re back from the Sunny State and I brought back a couple of souvenirs with me courtesy of my selfless seesta - two clippings off of her enormous fiddle leaf fig.

I told you I was trying to incorporate more plants inside this casa, right? Well, fiddle leaves are all over the web in every high-style home decor shoot which kinda makes me hate them even though I want to love them at the same time. Love them or hate them though, they’re expensive, especially when they’re outcome is risky! The price is fine and dandy but also means I don’t have the urge to shell out cash on them when I can get other greens for much cheaper. On top of that though, I love the significance of our potential trees – the willingness of Farrah to clip them off hers and the fact that we’ll have the fruit of her labor in our home. <3

So, now we have two potential flfs of our very own and I’m excited to see what happens with them. I’m trying to grow them from clippings into trees and so I thought maybe you’d want to come along for the ride with some weekly updates in case I’m successful and you have a selfless sister too. ;)

I’m using this tutorial by Ananda from A Piece of Rainbow on how to grow the trees from clippings and so far so good.

Here they are right after we got home from our visit and I placed them in a glass of H2O:
(On the trip home, we stuck them inside a huge ziploc bag filled with enough water to cover the stems and that kept them nice and safe.)

And here they are after one week:
They’re not brown and dead, and that’s all that matters at this point. Ananda says it could take anywhere from four to six weeks for roots to start developing so I’ll be playing the waiting game and crossing my phalanges that those roots show up.

Here’s what the stems look like right now: