Pets

I am not allowed to have open flames or pets in my new apartment.  That is okay with me.  I have an electric fireplace that is very realistic and Bearnard, my teddy bear, is an excellent pet.

Bearnard listens intently to everything I say, cuddles with me at night and never barks at the neighbors.  He might bite someone some day, but without any teeth it is unlikely that it will be a problem.

Still, I had a yearning for something a bit more alive so I went shopping and bought George and Michael as well as their little brother, William.  George is a spider plant!  A wild mass of leaves and babies that takes up a whole corner of the living room.  He is a rescue plant I found burning up in a retail store.

Michael is a pothos and also a sort of rescue.  I found him cowering under a shelf in the half price section of a chain that probably would have dumped him next week.  He sits proudly on top of my refrigerator where he and George can see each other.  From a distance, but still, they are company for one another.

William is just a little waif, an orphan born in a paper cup.  He doesn’t come with any pedigree.  All I know about him is that he is a fleshy little plant with bright green rounded leaves whose parent was probably a foliage plant so he may not thrive inside.  But George and Michael fell in love with him so he gets to stay.

These guys increase the coziness factor of my apartment ten fold.  They sway in the fan, eat up the carbon dioxide and the two older ones are both pretty hardy and very dramatic.  If I forget to water them they will droop and moan and go to great lengths to get my attention.  That is sometimes necessary in this house and it increases their life expectancy by a lot!

So now I am beginning to reclaim the life I once had before starting over.  It takes a while to do things right.