plants, I mean you no harm

January 19th, 2007

I've killed my share of plants in life. Not intentionally, poor things never hurt nobody. But it's hard to work up an artificial habit of watering plants just like that. I never had any plants in my care, so I would just be asked to water them when the family wasn't home, and... that wouldn't always work out so well.

Once I was supposed to leave them in the bathroom, in a bucket with some water at the bottom. It was risky, but it was the only hope of keeping them alive while we were gone for five weeks. I did put them in there, but... forgot to fill up the water just before I left. Over a month later... almost all were dead. Survival of the fittest, eh. :/

Another time we were gone over Christmas and as the last one to leave I was supposed to turn off all the heating, except one heater in the center of the house. In my zeal to unplug the tv, vcr etc (in case of the proverbial lightning that will strangle all electronics, but which never actually comes), I accidentally unplugged said heater as well. It just so turned out that that was the coldest winter in about 5 years, apparently the temperature had stabilized around -20C for a full week or so. Not only was that not ideal for the plants, when we walked into the house, well... the hallway floor was covered in 3cm of ice. Turns out there was a leak from the toilet water basin, something must have cracked in the cold, and water started leaking through the floor, down to the floor below, and the floor below that one. There was some speculation as to whether that one heater, had it been left on, could have fought off the crazy cold. In any event, as I walked into the house, instead of warming myself up from the cold outside, I grabbed a shovel and started cracking up the ice on the floor, real nice way to start the new year. Fortunately the damage wasn't that great, and insurance covered some as well. But the plants took a beating. Once again most of them had to kick the bucket.

Man learns from his mistakes, eh? One can only hope. I haven't had any mishaps on that scale for many years now. :mute:

Hm, long intro. The real point I was going to make here is how well I've cared for the one plant I actually have now. I bought it at IKEA last year and since then the cactus has not only survived almost a year, it's blossomed! :eek: Under my care, can you believe it? I managed to kill off some cacti when I was a kid, and since then I've never had a plant of my own.

Hm just now I can hear a bunch of cooks playing guitar and singing Beatles songs somewhere in the building (or across the yard possibly). That's odd, this is an apartment building, didn't know boy scouts came to camp here.

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4 Responses to "plants, I mean you no harm"

  1. erik says:

    You killed cacti? Fantastic :D

  2. Nawaf says:

    damn, cacti? You must have a license to kill :D

  3. Graham says:

    Yeah, I was about to say... cacti are famous for being sturdy survivors...

  4. Graham says:

    Hmm, how did I not see Nawaf's comment until after I commented? Twice is funny, but 3 times is just rubbing it in :irritate: