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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.)

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