Incoherence

OK so I was planning to write a post tonight about our Venus fly trap and the fact that really a better name would be "very delicate, occasional small bug trap" (only I was going to make that the punchline) because, after feeding every trap with a great big fly within about two days of buying the plant (only I was going show this with a picture of all the traps closed), I googled "overfeeding Venus fly trap" and found out that this was not a good idea.

Some people say you can give them a bug once every 2 months but others say you should never feed them ever at all because the plants need a lot of energy to digest bugs and giving them too many weakens them and is the leading cause of domestic Venus fly trap death. And even those who say you can feed them say the bug shouldn't be more than one-third the length of the trap, but the house flies we put into the traps were at least half the length of the traps.

The googling also taught me that Venus fly traps can only be given rainwater and definitely definitely not water with a lot of calcite, which is what our tap water is full of, and also that the soil must always be wet and never ever be allowed to dry out ever, and that preferably they should be in some kind of terrarium to keep the humidity up and that if you don't have a glass terrarium you should improvise with PET bottles if you want healthy plants, and that watering problems are another leading cause of domestic Venus fly trap death.

The rainwater bizzo has been a bit pesky as it's been a drought here ever since we bought the fly eating plants, so I have basically been stealing people's collected rainwater to keep them watered. But I haven't been stealing enough so their soil has dried out a couple of times. (Maybe more than a couple.)

And then the googling also taught me that the plants need a lot of light and that even a sunny windowsill is not light enough and you should put electric lights right up close to them to be sure they are getting enough light, and that lack of light is another leading cause of domestic Venus fly trap death.

I like my Venus fly trap and honestly want it to be happy, but sticking it in a PET bottle with a light 2 cm above the traps just isn't going to work for our living room decor, so, with the overfeeding and dry soil as well, I'm not sure how long it's going to last. But it has been making new traps like crazy since taking up residence on our sunny windowsill so I'm trying to think this is a good sign and that maybe it's not as delicate as google results would have me believe, and not that it's growing these traps as a stress-induced last-ditch all-or-nothing desperate attempt at survival.

Only I've been working long hours lately so I'm too tired to put it all together nicely.

I have done my usual trick of accepting too much work and not having enough time to do it, this time before my mother arrives next Friday for a week followed directly by my brother and his family for 3.5 weeks. So apologies for the light posting last week... and apologies in advance for light posting over the next few weeks.