Feeling antsy?

When I was a kid I wanted an Ant Farm really bad. I don't know if my parents were too cheap or too poor to waste money on something so trivial. Either way I wasn't ever given one. So one day I took an empty mini aquarium and filled it with dirt and placed it outside. In the center of the home made terrarium I placed a piece of candy. Soon I had a swarm of ants crawling all over the ghetto ant farm and I placed a piece of glass I found over it. Satisfied that I had won over frugality or poverty and got what I wanted I headed inside with my farm.

I placed it on a shelf near a window and watched it daily as the little ants went about their days building tunnels and eating the tiny scraps I placed inside. I was more than pleased with the little community that was living ontop of my shelf. That was until one day when I forgot to close the bedroom door and I came home to an empty ant farm that was toppled over and the ants had escaped. The usually suspects were my siblings, but since they were in school with me it could only have been my cat. Once my mom found out about the farm and their escape of the farm I was barred from ever having one again.

Since then whenever I see an ant farm in a store I have to fight the urge to buy one and send away for the ants. Now that I'm grown up I fear buying one farm that will lead to many additions that completely take over my room. I think I'd turn into the ant keeping equivalent of the crazy cat lady. But I came across antcam.com and I have the urge to build one of these cool Claustral Cells. Part of me really wants to do it but the other part of me fears another escape. Maybe I'll just leave the ants in the garden where I can feed them pieces of candy and watch them march up and down plants.

Well....um....err...

I was telling some people over the weekend about my new hobby of collecting Cacti & Succulent plants. Of course no one understood why or was really interested so I didn't talk to much about it. But I got an e-mail from one of the persons that was there asking if I had something like the pic attached to this post. She wanted to give a Cacti just like this as a gag gift to a friend. Unfortunately (or is that fortunately?) I don't own any Cacti shaped like these but I found the pic to be pretty funny.

That's some "passion".

I happened across this site that had a lot of cool plants in it. There is a huge collection of Passiflora pic (which I have no luck germinating, btw) and some cool carnivorous plants. His growing set-up is crazy looking and something that either came out of the mind of a mad man or a serious plant lover. You can decide for yourself.

krstofer.org

Three New Additions

I happened to be by a large nursery in the suburbs of Chicago. I was there a little early so I decided to wait for them to open. I was a little over whelmed with the plant selection especially when I noticed just how many C&S they had.

Unfortunately that early in the morning they couldn't make change so I came home with only three smaller plants. I got one good sized hanging planter of Ceropegia Woodii, one smaller pot of Lithops and an unknown. Here is a pic of the Lithops and the plant I need IDed. I had been looking for Lithops for the longerst time and now that I know where I can find them I will have to go back. Especially because the price was pretty reasonable. Both of the plants in this picture were $2.99

Amaryllis Seeds.

It seems like I have finally gotten seeds from my attempt at crossing my two Amaryllis that were in bloom at the same time. Unfortunately, the tags on each seed pod fell off and I can't remember which were the crosses and which were the ones I pollinated with the same flower. I should get some more Red Lions and more of the X I have, and maybe some interesting crosses from these batches of seeds. Here is a pic of the two flowers I crossed.