Plant buying spree!

So I finally got to go on my “plant spree” which was not *quite* as fruitful as I’d hoped, but still fine in the end.
I’d printed myself out a list of plants I’d like to get based on all the great recommendations I’ve gotten, and also on my list were other “supplies” that some of you suggested.
I’d found a nursery nearby listed in the phonebook, and this morning my son and I set off.
Turns out this nursery is really close by, although not exactly where I expected it to be. I did suspect correctly that it is more of an outdoor nursery (which I will take advantage of more in the future) but I did find that they do have a decent selection of indoor plants.
Problem was – most of them weren’t labelled at all, and even though I looked at pictures of pretty much everything I was interested in, I’m just not familiar enough to know if what I was looking at in the nursery was really what I was looking for.
And oddly enough, there weren’t a lot of employess in the indoor plant area, and I was having a good time wandering through there without help anyway.

The nursery was so huge as to be absolutely overwhelming and the indoor plant area was AMAZING. More plants than I’ve ever seen in one place at one time, and they have a number of fountains and pools with koi and carp, all of which my son really enjoyed. I could have just spent all day in there, and in fact they had a very nice little restaurant in there, I’ll have to go back sometime just for that.

The funny thing too was that all the plants that I found that WERE labelled as to what they were, were not on my list at all, and were not plants that I knew anything about. They *did* have some plants segregated as “high light”, “low light” etc. but I still didn’t feel comfortable buying any of them since I had no way of knowing wether they were cat-safe or not, and they were all larger and more expensive ($20+) anyway.

Anyway, after browsing around for quite sometime, I ended up with 4 plants: a lovely little cyclamen, a pocket book plant (I wanted one anyway, but my son was delighted by these – he liked the cyclamen too, and helped me pick out a certain plant for both), a polka dot plant (which I’ve never heard of, but I like the way it looks and it says it’s a medium light plant, so it should be okay – and duh, I just realized I don’t know if any of these are cat-safe either! D’oh!), and then an unlabelled plant that I’m pretty sure is sanseveria – the only plant that was actually ON MY LIST!

The other thing that I was having a hard time with is that I wanted smaller plants – for one thing, the larger ones were more expensive. I did, for instance, see some nice rubber plants, but they were all at least 6″ pots, and about $20 each. Also, I was hoping for slightly smaller plants to have the satisfaction of not just keeping them alive, but of *growing* them myself.
Everything I got today is relatively small. In retrospect, I may go back later for one of those rubber plants, as I’m sure it would make a nice floor plant.

I also loaded up on terra cotta pots and saucers, and cheap, clear plastic saucers.
My son was really interested in seeds, so I got some herbs – basil, oregano, cilantro and dill – tomatoes, and some flowers (my son picked them all, as well as the tomatoes) – shasta daisies, wild flax and dianthus.
I also got some “jiffy pots” and some seed starting soil (which the cashier said she really liked) and some rooting powder.

Later, I commited what is probably a cardinal sin and bought a couple more plants at *hangs head in shame* kmart.
I really just went in there to look at gardening SUPPLIES (and I did buy two brands of all purpose potting soil) but their garden center was “closed for the season” (I thought that was really odd, what with spring coming on) and right in front of the door out to the garden center they had a large display of what must have been the last of their plants.
So I picked through them and got a pretty robust looking aloe vera (actually all of their aloes looked fine, but they all seemed WAY too big for the pots. I chose the largest one, figuring I can just re-pot it. The plant is about 10″ tall, and the pot can’t be more than 4″. Any recommendations? I’m definitely taking Kelly’s suggestion and leaving it alone for a couple of weeks, or until it looks like it is suffering – right now I think it just needs to dry out a LOT, as everything I’ve seen so far on aloe suggests not watering them much, and this one is WET. And of course it’s in a plastic pot).
They also had a LOT of lucky bamboo, on sale for $8 or $9. The one I chose was not as tall as some, and doesn’t have as many leaves, but it does have 4 shoots? (like 4 little bamboo sticks) and all of them have some little leaf shoots – one just has one tiny shoot, but one other one has two big ones. The shoots look green and healthy, so I’m hopeful.
Does anyone know how fast these will grow and how big they will get? I’m wondering if this was a good price, and if maybe I shouldn’t go back and get at least one more if it is, or would it become overwhelming sooner than later?

I’d also recently gotten three different “cat plant” kits – one catnip, and two “catgrass” – one is just oats, one is a mix of oats, barley and wheat.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions regarding care of any of these plants, of course, I’d love to hear them.