My potted Ficus benjamina is driving me nuts. It only cost me 75 cents on sale at Lowe’s a few years ago, and it is not worth the angst.
It had a wonderful summer outdoors in '08 and put on quite a bit of growth, so much so that I had to cut it back to about 3 feet and move it to a different spot in my office so as not to bring the physical plant Nazis down on me for violating sprinkler clearance regulations.
It still gets adequate fluorescent light, just not quite as much as it did in its previous spot and obviously less than it did outdoors. It is in a snit about this, and has been accentuating its sulk by dropping leaves for the past six months. On the order of 1-2 or more a day. Now, it’s normal for plants to lose some leaves in the transition to indoor living. It is not normal for this to continue ad nauseaum for months on end. I will be engrossed in work and then hear the soft rustly sound of yet another leaf falling. Bizarrely, even with what has to be more than 250 leaves lost and an impressive degree of self-mulching, this &(# tree still looks nice and full. Apparently it is inventing lost leaves that it never had in the first place. It just wants to punish me for not pampering it to the fullest, by this incessant soft susurrus of leaf drop. (crunch)
Stupid tree! It will be a couple of months before I can put you oudoors again. Keep up this passive-aggressive slow suicide, (rustle) and I may lose it before then and stuff you bodily into the garbage can, and you can explore the joys of life in the dumpster.