Some people talk to their plants. Greeting my aloe vera has become a habit.

I was given the plant three Christmases ago when it was very small. A visiting puppy dragged it out of its pot and chewed it, but it seemed to recover well when repotted. Since then, it has grown so tall that it was disappearing under the lamp shade beside it. It needs stakes to stop it from keeling over. I found out that aloes can grow tall searching for light (even a light bulb?!).

This week I found a suitable outdoor pot for it (50% off, thank you, Mitre 10). I had planned to put it beside the yucca on the driveway, but having read that aloes are frost tender, I opted to put it under the glass roof. There, it will get full sun most of the day and shelter in winter.

The root ball is tiny, so this larger pot will give it room to grow, I hope*. It still needs support, but perhaps it will bulk out before long, otherwise the solution may be to cut it shorter and repot the cut piece. However, I don’t want to end up with a forest of aloe veras – then it’ll be, “‘Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo”.

*A synonym for a gardener: an optimist.