Jes and Ian

With the snow finally melted away and a week’s worth of gorgeous spring weather, I finally got my act together enough to go on a terrarium collecting walk. Inspired by Donna Smith’s hermetic jar terrarium that she constructed during my Philly Secret Santa project night, I bought a similar jar in January with the hope of following her lead. To reign in my tendencies to spend way too much at plant nurseries, I aimed to make this strictly from found plants. Which, with feet of snow on the ground in February, became a little impractical.

Ian accompanied me on a walk around the neighborhood and down by the Stony Run Trail. It was fun to nerd out on all of the different kinds of moss and lichens around, and it really helped me slow down to enjoy my surroundings. I brought home one chunk of moss with an earthworm in it, because I couldn’t manage to coax it out. We also watched different colonies of ants in trees and dirt and taking wing to start new colonies. Like I said, it was fun to nerd out.

I went a tad overboard on my trek. Not only did I come home with stones that were too big, I came home with so many small samples of different plants, bark, and mosses that I couldn’t fit them all into the jar. Even when I made the arrangement in the jar sideways to get more planting space, I had far more samples than I had terrain.

I do not have any other large glass jars or dishes to make into terrariums right now, so I instead improvised with a casserole dish. I intend on finding other more appropriate placements for these plants later, but I had been concerned about the mosses’ welfare out in plain air. While trying to find a way to keep the plants moist, Ian made the excellent suggestion of using the left over window plastic that we just took off our winterized windows. Following Ian’s thoughtful suggestions, I made a small tent of plastic with double-sided tape, plastic, and a found (and quite straight) stick in the middle of the temporary terrarium.

Depending on how well this temporary terrarium goes, I may decide to keep it or find a similar approach to setting up the more permanent fixture. Perhaps a glass bowl over a fun platter. Perhaps a compelling dish with the same tipi effect with plastic. In the meantime, I will be monitoring these mossy landscapes to see if they will survive my absentmindedness. I have been known to bite off more planting than I can chew during the spring months.

It’s simple…

If you ever want to sell me anything, wrap it in green. There’s a good chance I’ll buy it. Not neon green or puke green. Moss green. Fern green. Pea green.

Just as the heat of Summer brings nostalgia for deep blues and fiery oranges of snowy Winter nights, Spring reminds me how much I adore green. It’s all around, beginning in the bud stages, light and pale greens, peeking out from winter’s husk of brown bark and dirt. They give way to brilliant greens as translucent leaves yield to warm sunlight. Vibrant and deep greens roll across marble-smooth hillsides of short, damp grass. Wispy tops on tall grasses form an ocean of pastely, Easter green that wave at me as I pass with my windows down. Dirty greens mix with mossy reds and lichen browns to paint the rocks at the edge of the stream. Pea green wraps the torso of my buddy as she tills the soil in our humble backyard garden.

And it grew…

We started with an idea mid-Spring last year and it pushed out a pretty good yeild. I say “humble” but our plot is actually rather substantial as far as backyards in our neighborhood go. We’ve got about 100 square feet. Enough to have 8 rows about 20 feet long. I’ve been so excited about this thing since early March that I’ve drawn up plans in Illustrator so that we can map out what would go where (pencil gardening, if you will), I’ve ordered loofah seeds online so that we can have free loofah all year long and I bought my best friend a pair of tank tops (mentioned above) to wear out while working beside me. Weeding, watering and watching are the fun parts of the work. The free food is merely a reward.

Breakin’ it down to the ground…

Moving your face to knee-level in everyday life is reserved for things like changing the cat box or tying your shoes; but for a short time each year it changes the atmosphere. Suddenly, on a still, cloudy day it’s humid and cool, you smell the dirt and the insects invite you in as one of their own (mosquitoes included). Once they reach the proper timber and pitch, the plickets of water pattering the evening-lit puddles on the trough floor give you an auditory signal that a given row has been saturated sufficiently. Witnessing things you remember as black specks on your kitchen table blossoming into entire heads of lettuce and cabbage, crawling across the ground and up the fence to personally hand you moutains of cucumbers, exploding into giant florets of broccoli and cauliflower is a reward only a child could top.

Of course, you can’t eat children…anymore.