What on Earth is in those boxes?

A little over a week ago, my mother-in-law greeted me at the door after work with a question: "What on Earth is in those boxes?" Apparently, two humongous boxes had been delivered during the day.

My mother-in-law is used to strange boxes being delivered during the day, because I order lots of stuff from ebay. But she'd never seen boxes this big. I was really, really excited, and Nick was very curious.

So what was in the boxes? Let me show you.

These are just some of the plants I was sent. I had recently been contacted by a lady (also named Melissa) who works for Costa Farms. She had read my blog and heard I was looking for plants for school. She asked me if I'd like to try some plants for my classroom. I said sure, because you can never have too many plants in a classroom. I thought she might send me two or three nice plants. Instead, she sent me 25! Nick really loved touching all the leaves and saying, "Plants!"

This was one of my favorite plants. It is simply beautiful, and I'm desperately hoping I can keep it alive. It's a croton, but I like to call it a crouton.

See the bonsai tree? That was Greg's favorite, and we decided to keep that one at home. There's also a neat bamboo plant and some really healthy looking succlents. I love them all. I'm wondering which ones I'll kill first, and hoping that it isn't too many of them. I'm pretty attached. I was very impressed at how healthy all of the plants were. Not one showed any signs of over or under watering, even after being shipped from Miami!

I totally adore the pink peace lilies (2nd from the left). I also liked how many of these plants are pretty tolerant and enjoy shade. Melissa from Costa Farms really paid attention to what I told her about the lighting in my classroom. The only thing I had trouble with was that most of the plants came with no instructions about how much light or how much water each plant needed. I called my mom on the webcam and she gave me general instructions for each one. (I tried to remember, but forgot some of the details.) We kept some of the plants at home, so I'm hoping the cats don't eat them. Sebastian, especially, likes to munch on green things.

Then, at school, I used the internet to try to figure out the names and conditions. Hopefully I've put plants in their correct locations.

I'll post again next week and show pictures of how the plants in my classroom fared, at least thus far. Now, when new people visit my room, I can say, "Welcome to the jungle!" because the whole room is green with healthy plants. I happen to think the room smells nicer, too. Certainly nicer than the scent of 5th graders.  ;)