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?

digging up dirt

I was at the Great Outdoors and I saw a sign on the seed rack. I took a picture of it with my phone but I'm having technical difficulties trying to send it to an e-mail account. It said:

"Attention Seed Thieves: All of our Morning Glory and Poppy seeds are treated making them ineffective for what you want. Please quit stealing them."

A Google search of Morning Glory when I got home yielded tons of sites about using them for non-horticultural purposes.

While online I came across more drug-related, garden-related and overall interesting stuff.

Little did I know that Castor beans are poisonous. I'd heard of them and seen them in the odd seed catalog here and there but had no idea what ricin was.

Salvia divinorum? is that some kind of sage? I love pineapple sage! No, this article in the NY Times is definitely not about the Salvia I'm thinking about.

Marijuana used as a hedge in Australia, the neighbors never suspected a thing. "It just looks like an ordinary hedge in a suburban yard." Found on Neatorama.

Peyote in Austin? I thought it only grew in the desert out west somewhere (see Sept 7, it's a hoot.)

I'm no Pollyanna but this is a lot of drug stories in a few days. I'm not interested in using plants for mind altering purposes (except coffee and chocolate), but I am very interested in how plants and people interact. I think plants are an important element for humanity to help define ourselves and our relationship to the world around us. I think I'll leave this topic on that point.

I could talk about America's war on drugs here and I've thought a lot about writing about politics on this blog. There is so much to say these days but I'll leave it elsewhere. I perceive gardens to be neutral spaces and should be not have an ideology forced on them. I don't consider environmental issues to be very political because it is the concern of all living creatures to live on a clean planet no matter what political party they join. I think gardening can be healing and should bring people together. Maybe I'll write about politics when it starts to directly affect my garden but right now I think there is plenty of discussion elsewhere.

Horror-ticulture

S and I went to the Cacti and Succulent Show at Zilker Botanical Garden. He dropped me off and searched for a parking spot while I walked into a wonderland!! I already love the otherworldly shapes and forms of these marvelous plants but it was even better to see them up close and personally. There are some awesome cacti and succulent pools on Flickr that I love to browse and it was so cool to see the real things. There was so much to look at and most of it was for sale.

After browsing around for a few minutes the organizers announced they were having a raffle and since they had sold few tickets and had lots of plants to give away the odds were good. I bought a ticket and I won! Here are my new additions! The lithop is a Lithop dorotheae and I’m not sure what the tall one is. I’ve been looking at a ton of cacti pictures online and I’ve yet to discover what it is. Any ideas?

By the time S showed up I’d already fallen in love with two more plants this String of Pearls, Senecio rowleyanus, and this triangular succulent, Haworthia viscose, that will begin to spiral as it grows up and sending spirally friends shooting up too. Very exciting!

S thinks the string of pearls looks like an H. P. Lovecraft plant with

bubbling tumor-like tendrils that will choke us in our sleep and eat our bodies. He has a point but I think it’s cute. That’s why we get along. And that’s why Cthullu hangs on my side of the bedroom.