I Killed It.

Dear Terrarium Dino Battle,

In the immortal words of The Band, “My biggest mistake was loving you too much.”

My normal plant watering regimen equates to the philosophy that water = love.  I generally pour in as much love as I think our flora can handle, then allow the excess love to run out the drainage holes in the bottom of the vessel. (Note to self: Terrariums have no drainage holes. Just crushed rock. There is no escape.) Your mom told me don’t do it. I didn’t listen.

Sorry about all the love.

Your Resident Black Thumb,
Scott

Things at YBH aren’t always cupcakes and tulips. Our terrarium just… didn’t work out as planned. We very carefully followed the directions from Sprout Home, gave it the right amount of light, and kept it nice and warm. I just happened to drop the ball when it came time to water the poor habitat. We were told to mist the terrarium. Somehow, in my mind, misting just didn’t seem to be delivering enough water. I’m not the most patient man on the planet, so (against the wife’s warnings) I went ahead and let loose with half a pint glass of water. Needless to say, things got pretty soggy pretty fast. Dang it.

After a few days of repeated I told you sos from the Missus (grumble, grumble), I finally succumbed to the error of my watering ways and we went in to full on panic rescue mode. We removed all of the plants and placed our soaked-dirt vessel on the window sill during the only four days we’ve seen the sun (because, unfortunately, this whole debacle happened during the wettest April we’ve seen. Ever.). The dinosaurs were lonely, but now had a wide-open space in which to battle each other.

We referred again to the Sprout survival guide, re-potted our now removed little soldiers, and prayed for the best. After the plants were moved to safer conditions, we even used a hair dryer on the “cool” setting to further dry out the soil. And it actually kind of worked. A little.

Luckily, our emergency plant resuscitation was able to salvage one of the two. (We’re not all bad.) In a miraculous sign that spring is here, there are even a couple of new buds sprouting on this big guy. Looks like he’ll pull through after all…

But the bright-green moss was less-than-lucky. R.I.P. little fella. You were a great addition to our home in your short attempt to survive my grim reaper-like black thumb of death. Sorry ’bout that.

But at long last, hope springs eternal! We’ve done more research, talked to the experts at Sprout again, and learned from our (read: my) mistakes. We’ve salvaged what we could, planned a couple of simple additions and will rearrange appropriately. And then, of course, share v2.0 with you. We haven’t given up.

Any other tragic terrarium tales out there? We can’t be the only ones to have screwed it up on our first try, right? Right?