Skip to main content

My plant karma keeps me awake at night

It's an epidemic in my apartment. Remember this beauty?:


Dead.

Dead within weeks, dead. By time I figured out that something was rotting its stem, it was too late to perform a rot-ectomy in a hail-mary move to salvage some tiny wisp of the thing.

I've also killed a grand total of three begonias since I moved here. I think it's the humidity. I just don't know how to water things that already have so much water in the air around it. They die die die, becoming mushy weak images of festering flora. Everytime I walk past a plant shop to admire the pretty pots of tempting treats, they almost imperceptibly lean away from my gaze as if they are already crying in cowering fear that I will purchase them thus sealing their fate forever by placing them in my care.

A few weeks ago, I managed to save one small piece of stem from the last begonia to go down in my apartment. So far so good. Figuring I had little to lose -- it already had a death sentence through association with me -- I put it in a shot glass full of potting soil.


Then I put the shot glass in an emptied out peanut butter container (yes, I enjoy the butter of peanuts in massive quantities, do you have something to say about it?) to form a terrarium that is not to be touched/watered/breathed upon by me. A plant iron-lung, if you will --

-- which seems to be working okay since the clipping I took was only one leaf about the size of the teeny tiny one hidden near the soil below the other three in the above pictures.

*Fingers crossed* (not half so crossed as this little guy is keeping his leaves, though, I assure you.)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Picture Puzzler

A friend sent me another picture from the wrap party. As I looked at it, and recalled the good times, I was struck by something really unusual. See if you can spot it: I'll give you all some time to guess...

Batten down the hatches -- we're in it for the long haul!

Given that the weather reports for Edmonton this weekend are grim grim grim (lows of minus 33, highs of minus 25 -- with wind chills of around minus 35 to 40), I woke up early this morning to get all errands for the weekend out of the way in one fell swoop. I barely needed a coat this morning as I headed out to my car to embark on my mission. With each passing hour, the thermometer dipped a degree or twelve. By time I was done driving around (and paused to catch a movie at the neighbourhood googolplex), it was chill-lay outside. I am now snuggly boarded up in my apartment, with no plans to so much as peek my nose out my window until Tuesday (when the temps shall return to a balmy minus 15). Groceries? Check. Toiletries? Check. Magazines to curl up with? Check. Christmas Presents? Check. Lessee, I got my father what he's been asking for since I was old enough for him to give me his Christmas wish list: And I think my mother will enjoy her bungalow by the stream: For my sister and he...

"I used to think maybe you love me, now baby I'm sure"

I just got my first reference letter to submit with my admission package to film school this fall. And I quote: "I found her grasp of the craft of writing to be first-rate and she has an original voice, a rarity among writers." I'm a rarity. Which is similar, perhaps, to being "special" -- which, yes, people say of me only in association with making quotation marks with their fingers. We all gotta be something.