Bonus Blog

Shameless self promotion, I'm on twitter now @KikoToTheMoon

Earth Day

Today is a perfect day to pamper your greenies!

I know this is probably really weird to most people, but I like to pamper my plants.  I like dusting their leaves with a damp cloth, evening out the top of the soil, and yes even talking to them.  I enjoy admiring their beautiful leaves and telling them how pretty I think they are.  I used to pamper them with watering, but I've since learned that's not the best idea because I tend to pamper a little too much. 

I also take pictures of my plants to keep track of their growth and I root for them to get bigger (hehe get it..root).

I found today to be a perfect day to plant a philodendron cutting I had left in water a little too long.  He's now planted up in some soil and I'm sure he'll love it just as soon as he acclimates to soil.

Unfortunately where I live it's still too cold for my plants to go outside, otherwise I would treat my greenies to some nice warm sunshine.

What do you do for Earth Day? My dad always plants trees and I'd love to do that too, but I don't have a yard.

The Begining

I have decided to start a blog, well that should be obvious, it will ultimately be about my never-ending battle to keep house plants alive, along with the little experiments that can be attempted in a tiny apartment.  Here is where I’ll share my newest projects, the hurdles my not-so-green thumb and I face, and my epic failures along the way.

I’ll start with some personal background about my life with house plants:

Its very simple actually, it all started about three years ago when I left my parents plant-free nest and ended up in a sh*t hole (aka college dorms).  I was always use to having pets and since the university frowned upon having furries in the dorms, I naturally turned to fish.  This turned ugly despite my best efforts, and I quickly tired of the flushing carcasses routine and decided that maybe plants could be my dorm room friends.  The two years I lived in the dorms I had the same three plants, I loved it, they lived and they brought much needed color and life to such a dreary space and if I forgot to water them they actually started to look sad (If I forgot to feed my fish, all I had was another dead fish).  When I moved out of the dorms and into another sh*t hole (cheap, tiny apartment) my fondness for plants started to grow into a borderline obsession.  Unfortunately the plants that had accompanied me through college housing had passed on and I was forced to find some new leafy friends.  Things quickly exploded and before I knew it I had reached double digits on the number of potted plants taking up residency in my living quarters, much to the dismay of a couple of roommates (who apparently do not share my fondness for green).

Just recently I’ve discovered what amazing things plants can do.  Like rooting them in water to get a whole new plant, or growing a pineapple plant from just the crown (an epic failure by the way).  And I’ve even learned about the physical and mental health benefits to people who own house plants.  I had previously known that the air inside the home was often more polluted than outside, but I had no idea about the air filtering capabilities of ordinary house plants (and according to that my bedroom should be the most pollutant free room ever, oh the green…its…its…its everywhere!).  Since my knowledge has begun to flourish my borderline obsession has turned into a full blown obsession, the little experiments that I try and fruit seed that get planted, the time and money put into this is…well for lack of a better word…obsessive.  My days are filled with not only normal folk stuff, but researching cool things you can do in the plant kingdom (like my latest experiments: growing a pomegranate plant from a seed and growing ginger from a chunk of  ginger purchased at the grocery store).

I need this blog as a way to talk about my plant obsession without driving my friends to madness with my incessant rants about how cool plants are. Or perhaps I just need friends who share my love of Mother Nature’s leafy greens.