I swear, I’m not paranoid…but, that being said, there is proof in the posting!
I raise a lot of plants, probably because my father was a botanist with a degree in biology and a couple courses shy of being a zoologist. I can’t tell you how many trees I’ve planted over the years. Seeing those same trees 30 years later from the time when I used to jump over them as a child to an adult where I’d have to climb them (if I wanted to break something, not only on the tree but my body). It’s awesome to know there is a living legacy growing out there, somewhere, even if we don’t own the land anymore. My father grew up during the depression and helped after the great fires of northern Wisconsin to replant those areas. After seeing what happened after Mount St. Helens blew, I’m sure Mother Nature would have re-seeded the areas nicely, however, the State of Wisconsin planted acres of trees, heck, more than that and now, eighty plus years later, they are tall and strong. Personally, I don’t like neat little rows but prefer a variance, a natural look.
Well, back to the point of this blog, and there is one, I assure you.
It’s coming to get me, and here is picture proof.
I grow a lot of spider plants, have a Christmas Cactus, and a few other odds and ends. My aunt gave me a couple of cuttings of a purple passion plant last year when I was down in Arkansas and it survived the drive back to WisconSIN. One of the cuttings died in the pot, but, some plants do not do well here in this house. There is something about it, and no, I don’t have a black thumb but a green one. But, one of the cuttings started growing crazily this year and as I type in bed because of my bad back, I gaze out the window and in front of the window are all my plants, all in hanging baskets, on a stand my son and I made. I had to do it like this because when Kitkat was alive, she enjoyed mowing plants down. Now that she is gone I could place them around the house, but, my window gets the most sun in my northern facing house and my window faces south. The plants that do survive in my house include three varieties of spider plants that I really enjoy. It gets pretty lush.
Maybe it’s because of what I feed them. They don’t get straight water since the village puts chemicals in it, supposedly for our health (I don’t drink it either, shudders). Instead, I feed my plants water from my fish tanks, the bottom water that I siphon out to clean my tanks. This nutrient rich water is full of plant matter and fish droppings. Sometimes I will filter THIS through a plant set up where it goes through nutrient rich dirt and into a bucket (what can I say, I’m a mad scientist). My plants seem to love it. Even the water that goes INto these fish tanks stands in a five gallon bottle for weeks until the chemicals dissaperate, or rather evaporate.
I don’t understand why some plants don’t like the aura of this house. Personally, I no longer like the aura either but that is neither here nor there. I moved here with a couple of absolutely HUGE succulents that were the sizes of bushes, jade plants to be exact and they BOTH died in this house. I also moved here with a couple of display of Mother-in-Law Tongues, aka Snake Plants and sometimes called Sword Plants that had been cuttings from my grandmother and the plants were over 40 years old! All died in this house and I was heartbroken. I didn’t (then) feed them the water from my tanks but that was how I learned the water out of the tap was BAD! As I said, the aura is bad and I need to move on, taking my ‘few’ plants with me. My sword plants once were in one of those half wine barrels and I got them to bloom! Apparently they bloom once every seven years but I had so many in that barrel they bloomed EVERY year, man that is the most sickening flower smell you ever want to smell! Someone once offered me $400 for that half-barrel, but, we had a freeze that night before he could come pick it up!
My dream home would have an arboretum, a sun room, or just fantastic windows to grow plants! Btw, this is what a Purple Passion plant is SUPPOSED to look like, not the one vine reaching out to GET me!
Meanwhile, I wait for this purple passion plant, the one vine is over seven feet long! I can see it ‘hesitating’ in its growth of where it’s going to go. In the evening it is leaning towards my right as it might head back towards the window it grew up, it’s vine thickening as it grows. In the morning it leans towards my left and as if it is contemplating whether or not it will head towards me at the headboard of my bed. It’s a smart thing too, it has now figured out it will get added support/strength by resting on top of the post that holds up all the plants (except for those hanging from the curtain rod).
So, if I don’t appear on social media someday, you know, it GOT me!
Meanwhile, if you want to read about more interesting stories than my domestic ones, please click on the picture below:
LOTS of FREE advertisement for the company. He told me to answer to no one but him…and then, he went to Florida for the winter. His Chief Financial Officer suddenly thought ‘he’ was ‘in charge’ and went after me. Not sexually, just inappropriately. Getting called a ‘fucking bitch’ to your face nearly every day because you won’t allow him to interfere, stick his fingers in the money, etc is not fun. This harassment only increased from there. I detest the word ‘cunt’ and I got called that and other names DAILY. Now, I knew I was a woman in a ‘mans’ field, but when he enlisted the help of my people to harass me it took on dangerous elements. It took four months but they wore me down and set me up. I finally HAD to quit. He wouldn’t let me wait in the office for a ride since they took my company car away from me even though it was the middle of winter. I began to walk until my ride showed up. When the State of Wisconsin found out why I quit, they (the company) tried to deny my unemployment benefits. I won that round and got them. The State went after them for the sexual harassment but when it came time to actually go to court they backed out, said I had to pay for my own attorney, which I could not afford, and I was left hanging. Found out later that I wasn’t the only one this company had been sued for the same claims. While this was going on, they watched my house daily. I live in a fairly secluded area of my village and the car sitting there with a man sitting at the wheel was VERY obvious. The police went by frequently as I called them, concerned for the ‘broken down’ car that always seemed to be there. That went on for TWO YEARS.
It’s NOT funny, it’s not ‘boys will be boys’, it’s horrific, sometimes making suicidal victims in its wake. We already know our government ALLOWS it, but maybe we need to take the bull by the horns and make THEM aware of how WRONG it is!
The thing with an electric fly zapper is that the object of your annoyance, a flying insect just has to touch those wires while you are pressing down on the button that activates it and ZAP, they are fried! The thing people don’t realize is that you don’t have to swat it like the old-fashioned ones, merely wave it and hope to hit the bug, even marginally will put it down and then you can swat it, ZAP and actually put it out of its misery. You don’t have to bang it on the table or whatever is in the way, you can (and they have) broken the handle because of the things they hit instead of the bugs. After a while I had to replace the batteries, but it took years to have to replace the first and then the second fly zapper from over-zealous children.
Last year I was in a store and saw one, these are relatively cheap, for $5. Since they are usually around $7 or various prices (my research shows) I bought one. I’d thrown out the last one, god knows when. I didn’t open it for months from its plastic packaging. It just sat there, looking all shiny.
I don’t know if they are gnats or fruit flies and I don’t know why except it’s that time of year. I don’t leave out fruit or food, and my garbage is covered so why were they so prevalent? I don’t have pets or a cat pan to attract them either. It was just annoying when they would buzz around my head or straight at me and up my nose. Especially when I’m writing! I knew they had to go! They seemed attracted to my screen on my laptop but I wasn’t swatting at that! So, I unpackaged the shiny new fly zapper and put in two AA batteries.
One day while I was typing away on the computer, out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing one land on my Christmas cactus. Did you know that those fronds will set off the charge too, it was neat! Also, it will kill the ends of plants like spider plants if you zap them into the screen.
