Happy Friday, interwebs. The sun is up, the skies are clear. I have coffee. Do you have coffee? Coffee is life. I might have a second cup this morning. That’s how delightful this coffee is.
Honestly, the coffee isn’t really amazing. It’s coffee from the pod. But it was especially tasty this morning and my cup is half empty already.
I did some more terrarium maintenance yesterday afternoon. The smaller jars are more finicky than the larger jars. I’m trying to lower the moisture levels in them, but I don’t want to leave them open for a few hours because I will forget to close them.
To avoid forgetting to close the jars (or tempting tiny ants into them), I use a homemade thingamajig to wipe down the glass. I make it out of a square of paper towel, a rubber band, and a pair of chopsticks. It works. Maintenance day is my favorite because I can see inside the jars and get a good look at everything living inside.
Above, you can see how wild the ivy’s roots are going in Terra 3. The fourth picture is a close up of the film of … crud … along the bottom of the Apothecary’s glass.
And there’s a lot of life in these things.
I’m impressed with how well everything is growing inside each of them. My grandmother tried to transplant ferns several times when I was a kid, and failed every time. Conversely, I dug up a bunch, plopped them into jars, and they’re happier than pigs in shit. The ivy I pulled from Mom‘s garden is also hardy as fuck. There are new baby vines shooting out on two of them. I actually added another bit of it to one of the jars the other day as an experiment. All of my little ecosystems have at least a decent springtail population. One of the Apothecary snails died recently. The resulting feeding frenzy has had me fascinated for the last three days.
Last night, I was able to get pictures of a new baby snail that recently hatched in the same jar.
Tomorrow, my digital microscope arrives, and my jar cinematography will be impressively epic.
Aside from my dirt farm, life’s boring. We might go food shopping this afternoon. I have an interview scheduled for later this morning. I’m not too freaked out. Once I’m done with my post, I’ll put on clothes and do my makeup. After that, I’ll set up the “interview cubby”: the small area between my bed and the window that I dress up to hide the fact it’s still a bedroom. I’ll even put on a nice shirt.
The tiny ecosystems are so cool!