All about garden

Syngonium podophyllum

Syngonium podophyllum is a simple but elegant and versatile houseplant. It's actually "Easy" to look after in most homes, however because it has a unruly nature and tendency to creep quietly around your home (if allowed).

Common Name: White-Veined Arrowhead Vine

Botanical Name: Syngonium podophyllum

Design Ideas: It may be a good idea to grow the arrowhead plant in a hanging basket, the plant can be trained on a pole or trellis for support.

Important Note: All parts of the plant are poisonous. Know where all parts of the plant are growing and creeping around, especially if you have curious children or hungry pets around.

Syngonium Care Instructions

Light: When it comes to light requirements they will do well in a position where they receive good light but no direct sunlight.

Watering: Just remember to water well and then wait. Simple.

The soil needs to be evenly moist when you water, waiting for the soil to dry a little before evenly watering again.

Humidity: Humidity is some what important, because very dry air will encourage brown leaf crisping which on mass will distract from the beautiful leaves.

Feeding: It's good to try and feed an established plant a few times a month. Like most house plants Syngoniums do "rest" in winter but for only a short period. Therefore it's fine to feed in winter too if you want.

Temperature: This is one house plant which needs to be at the heart of your home because it demands warmth, even in cold months.  A minimum of 16°C / 61°F.

Repotting: They do pretty well in small pots, however if you are watering more frequently or growth has slowed (and you want more), repot into a bigger pot during spring using any standard compost mix.

Propagation:  You can do root cuttings in water, or straight into potting compost. You want a new growth shoot that either has one or two leaves already. Follow the growth shoot downwards several inches until you reach a pair of "nodes", these are a set of two small bumps (one on each side of the stem). The cut needs to be made just a few centimetres below the nodes because this is where the new roots come from. If you are rooting using water, it's just a case of dropping the cutting in and keeping the water topped up. A few weeks later you will hopefully start to see new roots. 

Speed of Growth: A Syngonium will grow steadily for much of the year provided it has good conditions. Left unchecked a stray vine can creep several feet in only a few months.

Height / Spread:  A well trained mature plant growing up a moss stick will, give you 1.8m / 6ft in height and a maximum spread of 60cm / 2ft. 

Flowers: There are flowers which appear on mature plant, although they aren't very exciting or interesting. The key selling point of this particular house plant is the foliage.

On Judgment of Others

Watch how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you’re not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgment means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.
The only game in town is the game of being, which includes both highs and lows. Every time you push something away, it remains there. The pile under the rug gets very big. Your lows turn out to be more interesting than your highs because they are showing you where you’re not, where you have work to do.
You just say, “Thank you for teaching.” You don’t have to judge another being. You just have to work on yourself.
When somebody provokes your anger, the only reason you get angry is because you’re holding on to how you think something is supposed to be. You’re denying how it is. Then you see it’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your own hell. When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought it would be, examine the way you thought, not just the thing that frustrates you. You’ll see that a lot of your emotional suffering is created by your models of how you think the universe should be and your inability to allow it to be as it is.
- Ram Dass

Thoughts to ponder over

The world is very beautiful and wonderful.
Life can be very easy when love is your way of life.
You may not have a reason to love but you can love because, to love makes you so happy.
Love in action produces happiness, gives you inner peace and it will change the perception of everything.
It is not what you say that matters. It is where you speak, from within yourself that counts.
It is not what you hear, it is where you listen from within yourself that gives meaning to the messages.
The energy of our thoughts, fueled by the energy of our emotions, fuel the energy of the words we speak, which results in the action we take.

Being in love with yourself

Its time we all begin to see ourselves through our own eyes.
What do we actually want for ourselves??
Rediscovering and falling in love with ones own self is the most ecstatic journey in life.
Accepting who we are leads to a feeling of calmness, relief and happiness.
It becomes essential that we renew our relationship with our self every once in a while to understand our underlying needs, values, and motives that drive our actions and behaviors.
At times, our true self gets hidden in the labyrinth of societal values, religion and educational regions.
We tend to put a mask for pleasing others,in order to get along the crowd which makes us lost and isolated.
Oscar Wilde once said: Be yourself; everyone is already taken, seems to be the summation of truth.

Forgiving and Accepting

Forgiving and acceptance are neither weak nor passive acts. They are acts of great courage.
When we first decide to forgive those who hurt us, your ego lets go of the memory, and you begin to see the actual truth.
People who hurt you are only hurting themselves. When you forgive them, you take your power back from them. You also release them from your ego and this is when the healing begins.
Don't be right, BE WISE.

Prayer

Prayer changes you, not things.
You need to be specific while you pray. Ask and you shall be given.
Payer is the answer that causes you to change on the inside, which in turn governs how you erspond to what occurs outside of you.
Once we drop our internal demands, requirements, expectations, and judgements of how things and people should be, the way in which we view and interact with the world around me shifted.
We start looking for what we could love, rather than what we or someone else lacked.  

enemies

If somebody is trying to make you look bad by spreading rumors and telling lies, really, they have done you a favor. What they mean for your harm, God is going to use to promote you. The more they talk, the more God promotes us. The more they talk, the higher we go.
Maybe at the office somebody is trying to make you look bad, talking behind your back, taking things out of context. They said this about me.
Well, let me tell you what I know about them." No, don't sink down to their level. Don't let their poison cloud your heart. Learn to bless your enemies.
When we know that God is our vindicator and rewards us when we don't take matters into our own hands, that takes all the pressure off. We don't have to try to pay people back and get involved in battles that don't really matter and set the record straight. Let God fight your battles for you. If you will stay on the high road, God will take what others mean for harm, and He will use it to your advantage.
When we learn to bless our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, we keep our heart free from strife and give God more room to bless us, promote us, and speak to us more.