First kill

Here's a really awesome video of a Venus fly trap growing. It's facinating!

My terrarium is doing really well. I was nervous about transplanting it into a new environment but it never even drooped. I've kept it nice and moist and had it sealed most of the time to keep out gnats. We have a fungus gnat problem in the apartment right now. It sound's gross but it's no worse than fruit flies, though they're a lot smaller and slower. I guess one of them got into the snifter (there's that word again) and now one of the traps closed and there's a tiny gnat shaped shadow in there. Ha ha! If you enlarge the first picture you can see the shadow. I wasn't going to feed it for a week but it took the initiative which makes sense with the new growth I spotted. It's growing, that means it's happy and that makes me happy.

Terrarium

I’ve got terrarium fever! I found a flickr group a while back that made me really excited, then I found the perfect glass brandy snifter when thrifting, finally when I was at the store last week I saw some awesome carnivorous plants. I recalled seeing some in terrariums somewhere with carnivores but I wanted to make sure they weren’t fast growing or needed anything weird I already bought one plant that wasn’t suitable for the miniature snifter wonderland. I had all the ingredients except plants so I went back and $5 later the wheels of this project were set in motion.

Take one jumbo snifter*

Add a layer of pea gravel

Add some soil mixed with sand.

Plant the new plant and add some more pea gravel and a few decorative stones

Now just add water! Distilled water that is. I’ll give my new friend a week or two to get her bearings and then I’ll feed my precious pet.

S suggested I make some small skulls and bones to go around it. I love this idea, after all venus fly traps seem to have a significant role in pop culture. Cleopatra was the name of the Addams family’s carnivorous plant.

I do want some more moss in the terrarium. The sphagnum moss that came around my plant had a few green spots. Maybe it’ll grow and form a soft carpet around my little friend. Maybe I’ll add some. One terrarium site recommended if I take moss from the wild I should keep it in isolation for a while in case it has any thing that could infect/infest or contaminate my other planty friends.

* I know I keep saying snifter and there’s a reason for that. It’s an awesome word, just say it out loud: snifter, snifter, snifter, snifter. See what I mean?

Weeding

When I get bummed out about weeding I just have to look here. There are pictures of houses covered in Kudzu. I've never seen this plant in person and I had no idea it was this invasive and aggressive.

It's like the miasma in the movie "Kaze no tani no Naushika" aka "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" by Hayao Miyazaki (the same guy that did Spirited Away) in which a poisonous ecosystem is taking over the world, nations collide and drama ensues. It's a beautiful and deeply moving about compassion and the environment with a kick-ass protagonist. It'll make you look at bugs in a whole different way. It's fantastic and based on a phenomenal graphic novel. The movie was made in 1984 and is just as fresh and relevant today. Check it out!