Plants and a Planter

Bonus points to the reader who can identify these pretty little purple flowers:

They grow on the side of a nearby property and make such lovely ground cover. We are in a long-term process of removing unpleasant invasive ground cover from our property (ivy, liriope, etc) and trying to replace it with something prettier, less prone to spreading, and less likely to harbor scary creepy crawlies. So if you can help us figure out what this is, you will be our hero!

And because I don't just want to make this post all about asking what you can do for me, I'd like to share a cool plant-themed find we made recently: The SOCKER Greenhouse by Ikea (and I'd been so good lately about not mentioning Ikea on the blog!)

But seriously, this thing is really cool! It helps to insulate plants in a microclimate that is slightly more humid and warm, it looks pretty darn awesome, and most importantly, let's us keep cat-unfriendly plants around the house without hurting our pets.

In this case, we have two spider plants sandwiching a jasmine plant. None of these are harmful to cats but we found out the hard way a few years ago that spider plants are basically cat LSD, so they would get devoured if the cats got access.

Now, does it increase the odds of us actually keeping a plant alive? Probably not. I took this picture a couple of months ago and the jasmine plant has already gone to plant heaven. But it's probably not hurting.