Learn to Keep Your Plants Alive

For most of my adult life, I have scorned plants. I have never really liked them and they have always seemed to die around me. The only plant I've managed to keep alive was an orchid I received for my 16th birthday that seemed determined to live long and prosper: it bloomed four times in a year of having it. I had to scrap it only because I ended up leaving town for a couple of months and had no one to take care of it who knew what they were doing with plants. That orchid was the exception though.

In Lisbon, I eventually took notice of the two-inch succulents often on sale in supermarkets for the cost of a baguette. They're adorable. I figured I would probably kill one if I got it. I also thought that all of the materials for making a terrarium would be more expensive than I could justify. Moving roughly every six months and not knowing whether I would be somewhere with living conditions that could maintain a plant also posed its own problems, be it for social or lighting reasons, and so the idea of keeping plants remained an idea that would spring to mind when walking by them at the store or late at night during wishful Google searches, educating myself on how best to take care of one just in case. You can't kill a plant that exists only on Pinterest or in tumblr images.

Since moving, however, I decided that it would be a good time to take advantage of stable housing and IKEA warehouses that are easier to access via public transit. My apartment is small and the light is not perfectly ideal for sun-hogging plants like basil, but the climate in Barcelona is favorable for growing just about anything. It's not too dry, it's not too humid, and the temperatures are never extreme. What I thought would be a small, cheap indulgence quickly proved to be a deceiving source of enjoyment, starting with a collection of cacti and a lucky bamboo, culminating in several more succulents, attempts to propagate new succulents from bigger plants, and an assortment of other types of foliage that look nice and aren't fussy.

It turns out that the secret to keeping plants alive if you have a brown thumb is to buy plants that are hard to kill. That may seem like a cop-out, but with a little bit of research on how to set up your plants (what kind of soil do they require?), how much to water them (you can't just starve a cactus of water until you remember?), and how much sunlight they need (can plants survive with artificial lights?), easy plants are, indeed, easy. There are many more questions than I had first anticipated (see above), and the process is different than I had attempted with other plants. That said, I seem to have found a rhythm and the plants are thriving.

Cacti are succulent plants as well, so all together, the plants tend to fall into similar watering routines and need similar amounts of sunlight. Propagating succulents turns out to be similarly easy. Usually they will take root from a leaf that has fallen and dried, sprouting a tiny new plant in a matter of days. It doesn't always work—over- or under-watering the leaves and not letting the end dry can ruin them—but in most cases, you can quickly grow the cute little plants that seem so cheap and enticing at the store right from your own larger plants at home.

The way you arrange the plants allows for a lot of room to be creative. You can create a terrarium from just about anything, so long as it has space to allow for drainage. I found a bunch of pots around the apartment going unused, so I decided to take advantage of them for the sake of saving money on buying new ones. I've so far only had to get two pots, one of which houses a small ficus, and the other, which houses the two larger succulents. The smaller plants that remain in two-inch containers, as well as the propagated succulents in their glazed pot, will eventually be moved into more visually appealing homes, but for now, it works together as a set. I'm particularly fond of the clay pot with a cork-like textured outer appearance.

Cost, as I mentioned, was a concern. I assumed soil, fertilizer, pots, and any other treatments might end up exorbitantly inflating the single-digit cost of the plants, but as it turns out, if you do your research, you can get all of those things for a minimal amount of money. Plants can be found everywhere, from your local florist and supermarkets to bigger specialty stores and places like IKEA. I got my cacti from IKEA in a pack together for €3.50, the three succulents in the clay pot were purchased at a local plant shop for €1.50 together, and the remaining succulents were gifts that came from the garden of a neighbor who has a house overrun with plants in the mountains. Sandy, fast-draining soil for cacti and other succulents cost €1.50 for 5kg (more than plenty to get a small arrangement like mine set up, with soil left for more) at the only large garden center in Barcelona city limits, conveniently a short walk from home, and the rocks used for drainage and decoration range from €1.50 to €2.50, depending on the size of the pebbles. Water is free (well, nothing is free, but it's not an extra cost relative to the plants), so it's nothing to worry about, and the season for giving these kinds of plants fertilizer is several months away still, so those are costs not to worry about. Otherwise, pots are very flexible. You probably have some lying about your house that you forgot about like I did. The ones I paid for ranged from €2 to €3.50. In total, for the cost of a nice lunch, you can get your own plants.

Keeping the plants alive costs nothing, though, and there's nothing to say you shouldn't have fun with them. They're pretty, they're cute, they even may seem to have personalities of their own. I grow cilantro that is very sassy—dramatically flopping about and perking up based on the sun, water conditions, and what kind of mood it happens to be in. I like to give the plants names as well, old-fashioned lady-style names. I couldn't tell you why I find my plants to be ladies, but it seems to fit them better. So I have Mildred, Winnie, Edna, Letitia, Eunice, and Henrietta, among others. As they grow, they give way to new arrangements and make space for new small plants. Just be careful, once they start growing, you may not be able to stop getting new plants to thrive in your house—I can't seem to now.

Hitting the Road Again

I apologize for the lack of a post, video, or anything else either Tuesday or Saturday (my tentative new schedule for content), so no excuses about it, and here we go.

Many people travel for some, if not all, holidays. My family and I never really did that when I was growing up, except for the Disney World trip on one of my first spring breaks that instead turned into us going yearly to visit relatives in an altogether different state. This year, however, being my first entirely on my own and coming from a different place in the world as well, I examined my options and thought about where I would want to and could go. I decided on Barcelona because I wanted to visit somewhere I hadn't previously, somewhere I had enough friends that I could stay with them and see the city from a more personalized perspective, it's one of the lowest-cost flight destinations from Lisbon, and because it's not nearly so cold during the winter as other destinations. Sorry, Paris, but I hate snow and temperatures that are in the single digits Celsius. So I'll be going for not quite three weeks, including spending New Year's Eve in the Catalan capital.

The idea that has popped up with one of my friends is to rent a car—it's apparently a cheap endeavor in Spain, so long as you return the car still in Spain—and get to know all of the environs of Catalonia, the region being sufficiently compact in size to take the time to drive around without spending a fortune or necessarily needing to spend the night away from home. If this happens, I'm hoping to also be able to see Valencia, since I'm unsure of whether I'll have the interest or equivalent amount of time to spend in Spain again, let alone appreciate it. I'm just not that roused by Spanish culture, the language, or the collective history, to be frank. I wasn't particularly moved by Madrid when I went to it, although it's a fine place, and that's a good summation of my feelings toward the country. My interest is primarily in regions that have stronger conceptions of independent identities, like Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia. But then we would be getting into the social politics of what Spain is as a unified country and other things I'd rather not discuss on this blog, at least at the moment. Suffice it to say, I have tended to have more interest in other places. So that being said, the opportunity to take some time and really get to know a region of the country is a welcome adventure, because it is out of the ordinary for me and will be something I am entirely unfamiliar with; I speak no Catalan and have difficulties understanding it in writing, I understand Spanish just fine when spoken or written but do not speak it, and we have the aforementioned cultural reference regarding the country itself.

That idea is similar, coincidentally, to an idea that I've had in mind for a long time but for some very obvious reasons have never had the opportunity to do: renting a car and doing a road trip, Iberian-style. I would love to be able to get in a car and get to know much more of Portugal, go through Galicia, see the Basque Country, and beyond. Portugal is somewhat surprising in being a place that really requires a vehicle to see and do everything on offer, alas. That trip will be quite some time in the making, until then, Catalonia will be a sort of test run.

So in the spirit of moving around and seeing and doing new things, of course I've taken my blogging and videos into account. For you, the half-dozen or so readers I get consistently, I have a couple of questions: do you prefer reading posts or watching videos? If you prefer writing, how would you like to see Barcelona incorporated on the site? If you prefer videos, would you be interested in watching vlogs from Barcelona? Let me know in a comment, a personal message, an email, a tweet, whatever way you feel like contacting me.

The Groove, or Lack Thereof

"What's going on with you? Your focus seems to be very off lately."

This question was asked of me recently after an exam, but it seems pertinent to everything else. I haven't posted much save for some random bursts of Portuguese inspiration. We all get in a funk sometimes, and this is no different. The difference for me right now is that I keep coming back to write a post, looking at the blank space where a title and post text should go, and staring at it until all the energy to write anything has dissipated. So it has gone that my attention wavers in class and papers and tests are a battle of settling down to the task at hand. None of this is for want of coffee, if anything I should drink less of it. Nor is it for want of things to do: between morning classes of Portuguese, night classes regularly scheduled for my MA, an evaluation period, visitors in town, and negotiations with people over starting English lessons (mama needs the dolla euro bills), I have plenty of things to do. I'm not bored, I'm just a little off.

So as I was walking the two kilometers to my university to turn in a paper—scatterbrained, unfocused perhaps, but always diligent with obligations—thanks to the metro going on strike and the buses being too full to catch conveniently, I got to thinking. As it goes with most things, my focus is not so much out of sync as it is out of sync with the things to which I am obligated, which is to say that when I am doing my coursework or thinking about writing a blog post that isn't yet another winding missive, my mind is elsewhere. Whether it be concerning ideas for working, creative projects, increased interactivity with Portuguese in my life, or other things I find myself engaging in more heavily, those are the things which I find myself wanting to spend time on in place of much of what I'm doing where I'm doing it. The ideas are not inherently bad, just misplaced in context.

I have never been particularly good at reconciling these sorts of conflicts of interest, so I've turned to asking and observing friends and acquaintances to figure out how they get on with it. Now I'd like to try something new and turn to you, the few people reading this blog, and ask you: what do you do to keep all of your priorities in order, all of your activities in check, and channel your energies both where you see fit and where they're required, all without feeling a little bit crazy? I find myself retreating into personal space and using other means of feeling grounded; as I was walking from the university, I decided to delay going home and wander, letting the serenity of a stroll alone sink in. Let me know your process in a comment, if you'd like.