"I don't know. Looks like he dressing his plants up for Halloween. Think they're supposed to be some kind of ghost or something"
Yep, I really did hear that last summer. I was on the roof, and didn't want to shout across the street to explain. A long time ago I learned that you can't move your houseplants directly from indoors into full sun light. Just like people, plants will burn if not gradually built up to receiving full sun. I killed more than a few plants in the early years by not following what I had read in books. I began regularly to acclimatize my houseplants to a drastic change in their living quarters each year when they moved from the protection of wind, rain, and sunlight.
Sometimes if I get started early enough in the spring, I can put them out at the start of a week or so of overcast weather. This works best before the days are too long, but the evenings are no longer very cold. We have a few spots around outside that are in the shade all day, and these spots are also useful to let plants get accustomed to direct sunlight gradually.
Invariable, the season catches up with me. I find no other places where I can shade the plants for the first week, so out they go to a sunny spot. To provide a bit of protection, I cover the plants with some assorted old sheer curtains which were my mom's. I use clothes pins to hold the curtains in place. After a week I remove them on the first cloudy day to give the plants their first full exposure.
The plants in the photo above are Night Blooming Cereus (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) and are family heirlooms. One belonged to my maternal grandmother, and is older than I (and I'm pushing sixty-three). The second is a cutting taken from the original plant and raised by my Aunt Stephanie for 30 + years before I inherited it. The third is a cutting I started for a friend who changed their mind when they saw how large our plants had grown. The two older plants were touching our ten foot ceilings when Gary lugged them down the stairs as I guided the leaves. Most survived the move. After securing the plants to the wall so they wouldn't topple over, I got the ladder and the curtains and proceeded dress them up.
My grandmother summered her plant on her shady front lawn, and it bloomed with great infrequency. The year I was in tenth grade was one of those rare years. I stayed at her house so I could draw the various stages of the bloom, which only lasts one night. That year it bloomed in October, so the plant had already been moved back into Granny basement, where it wintered on the window ledge facing the same shady exposure.
At our house we keep the plants in a south facing bay window when they are inside. They receive full days of sun. When we move them outside they go on the east side of the house, so they receive sun about half of the day. Last year we lost count of the number of flowers we had over the summer. When the first bud shows signs of being ready to open, we put friends on high alert. When we're sure it's opening, we hold an impromptu part outside. Last year word spread via twitter, and we had complete strangers dropping by to join us.
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