Homebody Nee

My poinsettia has been looking kinda sickly, so I googled up a cure. Turns out, I should have retired it after it bloomed and let it “mummify” before reviving it when the weather turns warm. (Sounds very mad scientist-ish, eh?) So I lugged it out to the balcony, where I will patiently neglect it for a while.

That little maneuver has freed up some space on the table in the sunroom, but I had to clean the sap off it before I could reclaim it for my own use. Did you know that the sap from a poinsettia can cause an allergic reaction in a large portion of the people with latex-sensitivity? Also, a poinsettia is not poisonous. As this site so helpfully puts it: “If you're going to knock the hubby off for the insurance money (there's a cheery holiday thought...), find another plant.” I love learning useful stuff off the Internet.

On one of my mad mad mad mad Spring cleaning days, I emptied the pantry (again) and pulled out the shelves (behind which I found some more larvae—AARGH!), then scrubbed everything with shower cleaner. Then I did the same thing with a small cabinet where we keep our snacks—crackers, nuts, dried fruit, popcorn—then I put everything into zipper bags and plastic containers. Now it is several days later, and I was just going to brag on our worm-free pantry (excepting Wormy Little Bastard on the flypaper, of course) when Hannah went to open a Tupperware of cereal and found a larva up under the rim. It was blocked from the actual food by the awesome power of the T-ware seal, but it *should not have been alive* in the first place. So then I had to check all the other million containers, one of which also had a foiled larva against the rim. Hannah wanted me to add the newcomers to the flypaper so she can feed them to her Venus flytrap—she just sowed the seeds 2 days ago—but I said, Hell, no! The flytrap will have to attract its own food. This isn’t a cafe, you know. It is very humiliating to be bested by a creature with only one more brain cell than George W. Bush. *zing!*

I am afraid I have gotten acclimated to the rigors of indoor gardening and pest battling; if it were to get any more exciting around here, I might have a heart attack.