When we first stepped into the garden centre, I was in love. It was bright and green. The air was humid, fresh and powerful. There were a myriad of beautiful living artworks. Thus I exited a proud and determined father of a plant (smugly still not possessing any pets). The instructions seemed simple enough. I would dedicatedly care for this wonder. In return it would smite my great nemesis, Mr. Fruit Fly.
Then I got home and looked them up on the internet and found some of the funniest written material I've come across in a long time:
The International Carnivorous Plant Society
Brilliant! Except I was doomed...
Venus' Fly Traps are ridiculously finicky and very high maintenance. What a fantastic first choice Nolan.
And yet I have prevailed on my quest. I went and bought a water filtration system at Community Natural Foods (my boss got it a couple of months ago). I had been considering it for awhile but regular city tap water just isn't good enough for my plant. No chlorinated fluoridated sewage for its likings.
I also bought Sprite Zero. Who would have guessed plants need artificially sweetened carbonated beverages? Well they don't. They just need a cheap terrarium, courtesy of a bottle whose bottom has been cleaved off.
Next I bought a lamp, a very stylish lamp from Wal-Mart I might add, paired with the oh-so-economical 13watt compact fluorescent bulb pumping out over 800 lumen (which I pimped out with brightness-increasing internally-reflective foil). That was not enough though. I had to carefully construct a 4 sided box from a nacho chip box and aluminum foil. Originally I had planned to make its home my bathroom; I decided against such things when I realized how annoying having an extension cord going across the counter and haphazardly balancing the appartment on my bath tub would be.
So now it gets to live on my bedroom window sill right above a heat register. With the timer for plugging my car in being used to ignite the light after the sun abandons the windowed west-facing wall at noon.
No it's not the $300 fish tanked wonder environment the website boasts, but my plant may just survive. At least it's lived long enough for me to feed it all the dead fruit flys collected off the other window sills.
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