Posts filed under 'General'
This could be viewed as a companion piece to How to Fail at Gardening. Not everyone has a piece of land to experiment with growing weeds and cat faeces, so here is a guide to maintaining a home full of dead or dying pot plants.
The best start is to pick up a pot plant from the bargain shelves of your local cheapo-bargain basement store. Look for the container with the driest soil and most withered specimen – failing that, one that has a lot of healthy moss or weed growth around the base of the main plant will do. Don’t worry too much about how to transport your purchase home – any way up in a carrier bag full of other shopping items will do. However, it is probably best to ensure the plant avoids contact with household cleaning products in transit: after all, you don’t want to kill it before it even reaches your home, as that would be defeating the object (this article is not called How to fail at Getting Pot Plants Home Successfully).
Once home, take time to consider re-potting your new plant into a carefully chosen planter with some good quality potting compost: then don’t follow through. The next step is to carefully select the best place for your pot plant to malinger. Some nurseries provide small labels depicting the growing conditions best suited to each plant – you can either just throw this in the bin straight away, or deliberately misinterpret the guidelines. Here follows some suggestions for good positions for plants to die in:
- on top of the television or microwave (especially good if your plant likes cool, shady positions)
- windowsill of south facing room (most ferns will suffer here)
- windowsill of north facing room (definitely a-goner for African Violets)
- behind any large piece of furniture or door of the least used room in the flat / apartment (or anywhere you will simply not see the plant on a regular basis)
- never in the bathroom or kitchen – you don’t want to run the risk of the plant surviving off the water moisture from steamy showers or boiling pans
Once in situ, it is very important that you do not move the plant. In fact, from now on you should ignore it as much as possible. This is another area where misinterpreting the care label comes in handy: check the watering guidelines and do the exact opposite e.g. water cacti twice a day. There is no need to be careful when spraying furniture polish, hairspray and particularly bleach-based cleaning products during your normal housecleaning routine. In fact if you do happen to notice the plant whilst cleaning, give it a spritz of it’s own – observe the effect and either repeat (if signs of damage occur) or desist (if plant refuses to respond negatively).
Larger, floor-level plants should be bashed-into as often as possible during vacuuming, used as sand-trays by toddlers and/or a litter tray by the cat. Cigarette ash can actually act as a fertiliser, so unless you intend to stub it out on the leaves or trunk of the plant, continue using your ashtray. Depending on the height and size of the plant, they can often provide a useful alternative to a clothes rack, so a position in a dark and dingy hallway or next to the bed should be considered.
It is very important that you do not show any interest in the plant’s demise, lest this be taken for genuine concern. It is especially important that any outbursts of temper at signs of health in the plant be manifested physically and not verbally. You can’t run the risk of swearing, shouting or other verbal abuse being misconstrued as concerned communication by the plant. Kicking, slashing or ripping are more appropriate outlets for disappoint.
Putting all of the above into practice will put you on to the correct path for Failing to Keep Houseplants. You need to be strong and maintain absolute disregard for the progress, health or condition of the plant to successfully complete the process. Do not be swayed by comments from visitors or attempts by so-called friends to move, water or otherwise tend-to your plant.
In time you will be rewarded with a dead or wilting plant in a container either light from lack of water or sprouting interesting fungal growth (which will hopefully be transferred to other plants by spore-dispersal). Should you get to this point, the only thing left to do is decide whether or not to buy another plant – do you have it in you to be a serial pot-plant killer?
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February 3rd, 2008
I’m sure there are a lot of you out there that have managed this at least once in the past, in the days when you used to marvel at how people could do a different thing with all four limbs at once, keep to the speed limit, watch other traffic, obey the rules of the road, read and understand road signs and STILL manage to change the radio station,smoke a cigarette and keep up a constant stream of inane chatter with the passenger. Well for those of you that eventually passed and lapsed into the realms of letting the car drive itself and only using one sign on the road, that being ‘the finger’, I’m afraid you are beyond my help at this point, but to all you would be drivers, who still think that to be able to drive is only one step away from being able to fly, then read on, and let all your dreams be dashed.
The Highway Code is the bible of the road, so if you want to fail, DO NOT READ IT. Stopping distances!!!! who needs em? road signs!!! as iv already stated, there is only one sign you need to know when taking your driving test, ‘the finger’, to be displayed at every roundabout and t-junction, especially when you are in the wrong. The horn on your car is there to be used, so whilst on your test, give it a blast when you see someone you know walking down the street or when you feel that the finger isn’t sufficient to put your point across to the other road users, or failing that, just when you feel like relieving a little stress.
Seat belts are there for your protection and more importantly, it is a requisite to passing your test, so leave it unfastened. And if you wear glasses, don’t take them to the test centre as its probably best that you don’t see the mayhem you’re creating in your wake anyway. Which brings me very neatly on to mirrors, and the use of them. At every junction, every time you wish to pull away and indeed whenever you are about to make a maneuver of any kind in the car, ignore them, in fact, i have devised a little saying for you to memorize in order to remember a few of the most important points:- ignore mirrors, don’t signal, maneuver at top speed, follow these three simple rules and you can’t go far wrong, or errr right….. Signals are for wimps, so just assume everybody knows exactly what you are about to do and go ahead and do it, your finger signal is the only one you will need to use in these instances.
Drive everywhere at top speed, wheel spins are particularly effective when trying to fail your test, as are hand brake turns, so practice these whenever possible. You are in fact, allowed to take your test in your own car as long as it is deemed road worthy and legal. So if finances allow, do just that. Adorn your car with bumper stickers such as ‘I hate driving examiners’ and ‘Kill driving examiners, not your speed’. Have big luminous green and orange fluffy things all over your dashboard, preferably in the way of your speedometer. Take your rear view mirror right off and have it laying on the back seat, this will have the added advantage of discouraging you from being tempted to use it as well as pissing off the examiner before the test even starts. And when you are lead into the car park and asked to read the number plate on a car at the far side of the road, say ;what car, whilst squinting in the opposite direction.
Talking incessantly throughout your test about the latest goings on in Emmerdale and how your cousin managed to pass her test by wearing a short skirt and no knickers will also help immensely.
Although your theory test is also a huge part of passing your driving test, i have not as yet mentioned it. This is because i assume that if you have read this blog through thoroughly, you will no doubt have noticed that part of my advise was NOT to read the Highway Code, therefor, if you have taken this advice to heart, then failing the theory part of the test will not present you with any problems whatsoever.
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May 1st, 2007
I’ve never had green fingers, so this particular failure comes easy to me. Apparently, growing flowers from seeds is the most difficult way of doing it as opposed to buying the plant at your local garden center and just watering it until you see flowers, so id opt for the seed approach to maximize your chances of failure.
Checking the sowing times is not recommended, just wait til you’re in the mood and then go into the garden and chuck them on the ground. Kick a bit of dirt over them with your foot and then chuck a bucket or two of water over the whole lot and wait expectantly.
If you fancy having a go at growing flowers from bulbs, then you need to invest in a shovel, and bury and little suckers as far down as you dare go without unearthing a water mains or the pet dog that you buried six months earlier. When they are good and buried, stamp the earth down good and hard.
If, after all your efforts the little blighters still manage to bloom, then here’s a few tips to make sure they don’t mock you for long. If it’s summer, then DON’T water them, and if its winter, then water them liberally at least twice a day. Also, try transplanting them to a part of the garden that is well walked on, i.e. the edge of the path, or next to the dogs kennel!!
All flowers and plants love frost, so make sure they are exposed to it as often as possible.
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April 23rd, 2007