The Family Tree

My uncle Jerry is a sculptor in Hawaii.  He works mostly in native wood and volcanic rock, and a few years ago he gave me this little bowl:

It's lovely and special, but I've never known quite what to do with it...until last week, when I realized it would make a perfect succulent container (after seeing a ton of examples on Pinterest).

We bought five succulents at Shoal Creek Nursery, thinking that three of them -- one of the tall ones, the round one, and one of the groundcovers -- would fit in it (we had other plans for the last two):

Once we got them home, we realized that we had misjudged the size of Jerry's bowl, so we made a little on-the-fly adjustment and decided to go with these two:

In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to take on this project on the kitchen island, but at least I had laid out some paper under my work area:

The main reason it got really messy was that the bigger pot was a lot deeper than the bowl, so I had to remove about half of the soil before planting it.  Since there were so many roots, a lot of them came off with the soil, but hopefully that won't be a problem....

Even after taking off the bottom half of the soil, I still had to cram the two plants in, but eventually I got 'er done.

There's NO WAY three would have fit.

So...where to put it?

After a failed attempt in the terrarium (Steve decided to steal one of the succulents I had in there...something about it technically belonging to him, and wanting to take it to his office), I tried the counter in the front bathroom:

That was okay, but I preferred it on the back of the toilet (and relocated the burro tail that had been there):

Total cost, if you're wondering: two dollars per succulent, for a grand total of four bucks!