A couple of weeks ago, I was gifted a DIY terrarium box, and I'm not gonna lie, I got a whiplash of my future years when I'll have kids and there will be nothing but patience and tears cheering me on because nobody else believes in me <Katy Perry's meme plays in the background - you have to pretend you're fine>, and the only coping mechanisms that remain are the memes of my end results.
But we started from the bottom and we reached somewhere,
And to think, terrariums were actually an accidental discovery in the 19th century when Dr. Nathaniel Ward first saw ferns and grass thriving inside a glass jar with their own recycled moisture, which was important for trading plants across empires. And the fact that I can now simply create one at home is a marvel of science, which brings me back to the 30 minutes of torture that I spent stabbing this block of soil.
The journey, of course, begins with the seeds of a coleus plant that are showered over some rehydrated soil, and we leave it aside for a couple of weeks to breathe life. The first couple of days, I remained impatient and checked for any sign of growth, but that joy evaded me, so I eventually forgot about it. And when a whole month had passed, I was overcome with a memory of my dear terrarium, which had successfully begun sprouting. I used my tears of happiness as a gentle spray over the young leaves and set them aside to ripen a bit further.
The idea is to make space for only the big, strong plants to remain active in the terrarium, so I had to Charles Darwin my way into the jar and scoop out all the tiny coleus into separate pots. This would hopefully allow the strong ones to garner more resources and reduce competition—a classic case of authoritarianism if I ever saw one.
With that, we are nearly done with the project, as the last few steps require setting a few decorative pine bark pieces and pebbles on the soil surface. I washed both of them before setting them inside so that they don't end up stealing moisture from the Darwinian plants. As a final apology for the violation of their space, I made sure they saw the sun at sunset before resting once again at their bright, indirect sunlit spot.
I can proudly say I am a happy parent, but the next time I mention I like plants in front of my fiancé, I'll remember when, a couple of weeks ago...
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