Venus Flytrap

Daily Meditation 971–10/30/2024

This spring I bought a small venus flytrap as a houseplant. I’ve never had a green thumb, but I liked the idea of a tiny plant which might help with the couple fruit flies who incessantly and silently swirled around our fruit bowl.

As the line “I’ve never had a green thumb” probably portends, you can guess how it went.

It turns out, they are relatively finicky little plants.

After a couple weeks of putting it outside on warm days (we live far to the north), watering as needed, and even “helping” it catch a couple big, fat, juicy flies, it was wilting.

Well — a quick search online, chatting with plant nerds brought up the fact it needs distilled water.

What a little diva.

So, I grabbed a bottle of distilled water and voila! it came back to life.

Then, over the full period of July, a tall, stiff and narrow “stalk” began shooting straight up from the very center of the plant. On the top, a bulb was slowly forming.

Well…after something like 5 weeks of eagerly watching this stem grow, and just days before the presumed flower would blossom, Jack — our cat — decided to give it a taste.
We came home to find the bit off bulb laying in the sink just below.