Today I kicked off a fun little project: a carnivorous plant terrarium kit that I got for Christmas. It includes a number of different plant species, and everything you need to grow them. The seeds are selected at random from the following list, so I don't really know exactly whats going to grow:

-Venus Fly Trap (Dionaea muscipula)
-Cobra Plant (Darlingtonia californica)
-Misc Trumpet and Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia)
-Misc Sundew Plants (Drosera)

Following the detailed instructions, I added the peat mix to the container, mixed it with distilled water and added the seeds. The next step took me by surprise: you need to place the container in the fridge for 8 weeks, a process known as 'stratification'. I assume this simulates a winter season to get the seeds ready to germinate. Anyway, don't expect many updates after this until mid-April. Cassie has already expressed mixed feelings about a bowl full of dirt taking up space in our fridge.

Labels: Carnivorous Plants, Photos, Projects, Terrarium

We're back from another successful vacation. I managed to make it through eight gorgeous days of beach and pool lounging without any notable sunburns. I worked through five novels and still managed to run out of reading material. A few of the books I had randomly selected from the MIT Coop, specifically The Rum Diary by Hunter S Thompson and Islands in the Stream by Hemmingway, turned out to be particularly excellent Caribbean vacation material. I'll cover that in more detail later.

Below are a few pictures, the rest to be found at Flickr. Also don't miss the video of Cassie doing a cartwheel on the beach which you can find on my Brightcove personal channel.







Of particular note, the clever sand and seaweed marketing attempts documented in the last photo did not instill any sense of emergency/terror/fearmongering in either the local Dominican residents nor the hotel guests.

Labels: Domincan Republic, Photos, Vacation