Plant Brains

In my constant quest not to kill my darling plants, I am trying to be mindful of the changes that me trying to deal with summer sun and heat have on my plants.

I suspect that I lost some last year to the direction of the air conditioner so I moved the plants directly in its path.  But I also think some of them are impacted by the intense loss of light.

Me covering my windows is one of the main ways I keep the heat at bay and while I can cope with the low light my little green plant friends can not.

So, yes, I have purchased "grow" lights that I use from time to time, but I don't know how good they are and don't want to burn the plants (plus the light is weird?)

But the point of this post was to share something kind of cool that I noticed and then was like "oh no" about.

One of my plants, called a prayer plant, closes up its leaves at night.  Or, as I have found, when it's dark enough to SEEM like night!

So this cute little plant is all closed off during the day because I'm blocking off the light like it's night time!  I'm so sorry little guy!

So I have been trying to find a balance of leaving the blinds on that side of my space slightly cracked until I just can't bear it anymore and then throwing on the grow light for a while.  I just feel for the little guy who must be getting confused by all the dark long "nights" that aren't actually nights.  And/or by me closing my blinds but then throwing on a light source it thinks is the sun!  But hey, I'm trying, I just hope they all make it through til Fall, you know?  (And I hope I'm not confusing the whatever version of a brain this prayer plant has!)