You Grow Girl™

Today at lunch I was watching an interesting episode of The Nature of Things. I've become a bit of a Nature of Things junky as they play old episodes twice daily on The Documentary Channel. Today's episode was on toys and how children learn. What was especially interesting to me was the segment on nature and playing outside. One thing that had never occured to me was how alot of toys that are made for outdoor use, i.e. sandboxes etc are focussed around machines for destroying or altering the natural landscape. When I was in University I had plans to go on to take industrial design to become a toy designer. Am I ever glad I decided against that path.

The show had me thinking for awhile about the kinds of toys that are developed for interacting with or exploring nature. I wonder how necessary they really are as all you really need is around you already. Mind you as a kid, and even now, I enjoy using tools such as microscopes and binoculars. I have a really low quality kids' digital microscope that is fun for taking interesting magnified photos. I have a series posted here. The show reminded me that I need to hook it up and try to take some new photos with it.

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Not too much is going on right now with the plants. January thru to spring is generally a downtime. It's not really a good time for repotting and everything is frozen solid outside so it is mostly a lot of waiting, and reading and making lists. I don't even do the list making thing anymore because it just gets me too excited and I go way overboard. I truly do not need to order anymore seeds. Although I have to admit that I spent a good hour or more last week researching Canadian suppliers of carnivorous plants. Now that I have one, of course I need more. Plants are like gateway drugs to other harder plants. Although in this case I started with the hard stuff (the Nepenthes) and I'm moving on to more recreational stuff like sundews. I want a sundew. I'm starting to get a bit annoying. Here is my new routine. Person comes over.

Me: "Have you seen my crazy plant?"
Person: "Which one?"
Me: "The new one. The tropical pitcher. It has crazy pitchers and it eats bugs and possibly baby monkeys." [I love to throw the baby monkey thing in there for shock value.]
Person: Apprehensively. "No."

Then after I show them the Nepenthes and go on and on about it for a significant length of time and then I pull out the book, "The Savage Garden" and turn to the section on Sundews and proceed to go on about how cool they are. It's those little drops of "deadly dew". I just love the photos of it glistening in the light. I did manage to find a Canadian supplier but there is no point trying to have a plant mailed to me when the temperatures are in the minus 20 range. I will wait. And attempt to engage Davin in endless discussions about them. And wait some more.

And speaking of carnivorous plants I saw Beate this evening and after my usual routine of showing the Nepenthes followed by the book, she told me that she has seen some kind of pitcher plants growing in the wild in the Saugeen Region of Ontario. I wondered if it was possible that we had something growing somewhere in this region and she claims we do so there's something to think about.

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I spent an hour on Sunday repotting my Urn plant as it had two offsets and the pot was overcrowded. This was something I've been meaning to get to for a long time. I'm really surprised by how long the mother plant has been going. Normally they flower, produce offsets and die but mine flowered, produced two offsets, I cut one out, it produced a third offset and it is still doing well. Go figure. My goal is to get the babies to flower. That will be exciting.

My next step in the Staghorn Fern versus the scale insect saga is to spray with a very diluted insecticidal soap mixture. I mixed the concoction up on Sunday afternoon but have been too afraid to go ahead and try it. I'm not sure why as I have applied dabs of diluted rubbing alcohol to the foliage which I assume is much harsher. I'm just a bit afraid to go ahead as the plant has a few new tender, fresh fronds that I would hate to accidently damage.