Margarita Sweet Potato Vine

I first noticed this vine as part of a three-plant potted arrangement we had purchased for a gift from Lowe's.
Subsequent visits revealed that the MSPV grew very fast--in fact it's capable of taking over half your porch if it gets enough water and light, even in a smallish pot of soil.
I was impressed and started shopping for my own but had no luck. (They are available now).
So I was back-gifted 2 cuttings from the ends of the original plant's many vines.
Took them home in a water bottle and started watching them.
Mine were about 12 inches long--the one above is a bit shorter.
All you do is strip 3 or four stems from the base of the cutting and keep it in water. I used a pint glass this time because after the roots grow you can damage them trying to remove it from a water bottle.
Oops--I ended up having to cut the bottle apart last time.
Set the cutting in a windowsill. Direct sunlight isn't necessary.

Within 12-24 hours roots will begin to grow from either side of where the leaf/stem was snapped off. You can see pores (for lack of the correct term) from which the roots emanate if you examine the vine of a mature plant.
The little projection in the stem's elbow sometimes grows into a branching vine--no idea what process stimulates this.
The above photo was taken after 5 days or so.
It's best to wait until at least 8-10 days before planting. By then you should see smaller roots branching off the main ones.

I planted mine in a mixture of Miracle Grow Garden Soil™ and local dirt with a moderate clay content that I had to dig up anyway to keep a fence gate swinging freely. Don't know if it helped or hurt--it's hard to tell with something that grows so explosively.
The plant above was just the two cuttings a couple of months ago.

The MSPV has a bright green color that provides a nice contrast to every other plant you might be growing.
Or you can go with the red/purple leafed non-margarita variety.
Can be used as ground cover or as a fence cover if you're willing to spend a lot of money on water, but I prefer to keep it potted and under control for now.
Likes it's soil damp all the time so I water it heavily every other day.
Martha's website says to wait until the surface of the dirt is dry before watering, and that's good advice.
The leaves will let you know, too.
Might be a good candidate for planting where your AC unit's condensation pipe drains.

Bonus: You get a free Central American sweet potato every Autumn, although I doubt I'll harvest mine.
My plan is to take several cuttings for next season's "crop" in a few months and grow them indoors (small pots) until Spring.
I've never played with vines before, so this has been a fun and educational experiment.

What's Inside My Head? (Now Featuring Martha Stewart)

Is the Holiday Whirlwind finished with us yet?


As things settled down to normal I found myself re-Photoshopping the San Fernando photo for prints, which are selling nicely right now thanks to a very special lady.
We secured next year's Christmas Cards at a great price, which is cool because the prints I add cost a bit more than WalMart charges for a 4x6".

I'm also putting my portfolio back together, filling the holes from sales and gifts over the last 8 months plus adding the new stuff. This requires packaging and framing supplies which were bought in bulk today so I'll be ready at all times.

Sunday night was the first real chance I had to play around with my most-needed Christmas present. It's a Westcott 32" Shoot-Through Umbrella, and I really like both the construction and results.
You have all seen photographers with umbrellas. The short version is that it turns a small light source such as a flash into a bigger and more-even light source, which can change everything about the quality of light on your subject.

That's my excuse for enjoying the construction of the following shots of a little stuffed toy and an empty Jagermeister bottle I picked up in a bar parking lot.
Did the first on Sunday night but woke up Monday with more ideas.
They might be useful for my band's web presence or not.
We'll see.





Continuing with the skull theme, I have been a longtime follower of Skull-A-Day where a guy showed the photo of each different piece of skull art he produced every single day over 1 year, in an amazing number of media.
I came in somewhere in the middle and enjoyed the hell out of it, but now that the project is over the site is more about his fan's "art" and the inevitable book deal bloggers get when they're clever and good.

There are some downloadable stencils at Skull-A-Day so on Monday night I cut myself a pair with an ExActo knife and tried them out on some old and scratched-up black background material.
The original sized result is on the left, my 65% version on the right, and it's stencil is angled up the middle featuring flat white Krylon over-spray.

This photo is all about photographic mistakes--we all make them, but do we find and fix them before it's too late?
It's a nice reflection of my new umbrella, which kinda ruins what I was going for.

**********Important Edit**********
Firstly, the correct answer to this post's title of "What's Inside My Head?" is:

A skull


Secondly, in a remarkable synchronicity of internet magic and luck, I present this screenshot of one of the above photos lurking inconspicuously in the corner of a webpage at the aforementioned Skull-A-Day website in fairly close proximity to Martha Stewart herself:

The Skull guy was on her show and it looks like they were making potato-skull ink stamps together.
Awesome.

As far as me and Martha hooking-up, it was due to her post moving far enough down his page so that it was next to the Blogger gadget that's in his Skull-A-Day code011010 plucking images from Flickr with the proper tag.
Short Version: A lucky catch on my part.

I knew my pic would show up on the site eventually due to the tag--I just got lucky to have stumbled upon it during the handful of hours when it was near Martha so I could document the special occasion.