Taking Spring Hostage

 

 My terrarium obsession.

It started with this $10 fish bowl I found on a buy & sell app…..

One of the reasons I love shopping for used items online

is the fascinating people I meet and never forget.

The Slovakian woman with swooping vines thumbtacked over her entire ceiling

also sold me a toy truck and some wooden utensils,

gave me a bag of empty glass tincture bottles

and a sprig of a spider plant.

On my way out she said,

“Just phone if you need advice with your new fish!”

Fish?

I was just planning to make a terrarium with it, but…

Bing!

As Laura Numeroff would say,

“If you give Gigi a fish bowl, she’s going to want a fish to go with it!”

So I started thinking about fish.

(I, who have never had a pet or wanted a pet!)

I’ll get Maddy a fish for her birthday, I thought.

So I wrapped up the empty fish tank….

And we got our first pet!

Best present ever!

She picked out this beauty and named him Menorah.

But….

Having started down the fish path,

I started thinking about filters and heaters and pebbles and decor and fish food and more…..

I started to think

“this fish deserves a Real Tank.”

So I Kijiji’d fish tanks.

Soon I was also the owner of a 10 gallon aquarium, complete with….

it’s OWN 15 guppies (which soon multiplied), a weird shrimpy dude and a big bottom sucker fellow.

We (the very, very non-pet people)

were the sudden parents of like 20 sea creatures!

I had amassed a nice collection of jars by this time.

Next I called up my friend Nanny Jax

to help us forage for signs of life in the forest…

Moss.  Lichens.  Cool sticks and barely-sprouting bulbs.

Bark and pine needles.

(The end of April and that’s all we’ve got!)

So I bought some succulents too…

For the charcoal layer I thought I may as well experiment with shaving the burnt logs

left from the forest fire from a couple years back.

For the bottom layer, precious rocks from my lifetime of beach-combing the North Saskatchewan River

as well as California shells from my childhood.

Layering the life-support for a little ecosystem is beyond fun.

I would say it’s spiritual,

grounding, meditative,

hopeful….

and addictive.

“Seeing the sweet little terrariums lined up in the window

and the colourful fish swimming round and round

will remind Gigi that —

even though she lives in a dreary, drab, frozen wasteland —

Living Things can erupt anywhere

and often do…

when you give Gigi a Kijiji!”