Corax_Vox on gardening

Ever since I was little, I had very fond memories of my mother and father’s gardens.

I’m from Northern Illinois, a fairly large city. My parents gardens were award winning. I don’t mean that as a figure of speech either -- my parents actually won city awards for their landscaping. My dad always had a fantastic garden as well and we were always stuck eating a ton of squash, zucchini, and broccoli after the harvests.

The thing I will never forget is the flowers. My mom loved the climbing morning glories, tall crimson canna lily, and marigolds leading up to the house’s main steps. Living in Northern Illionis, we had very hard long winters, with a lot of snowfall. I always thought my folks were a little mad, digging up over 15,000 square feet of flowers to bring them inside, tucked safely into garbage bags to sleep the winter away in the basement.

It wasn’t until recently that I, myself, picked up the gardening bug. I’ve always had a bit of a brown thumb. The only thing I’ve ever managed to keep alive was a cactus, and that was because to keep it alive you basically need to forget it exists. Then, when you’re dusting one day, you find it and go “Oh! I need to water this!” and pour a bit of water in until the next time you spring clean.

When I got married, I married a man who adores gardening. He grew up in the woods, with a mother who believed in helping reclaim natural areas. He began to show me how to actually grow things.

It all started off with a single little plant. A venus fly-trap. It was a tiny little thing, and I got it from the hardware store I worked at. I’d always loved fly-traps, and thought it would make a wonderful gift for my husband. We found a wonderful place to put it, and that was that.

Until I noticed that this thing was the size of the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, and it had flowered. I had never seen a flytrap to flower. From there, we began investigating on how best to care for it. Around this time, I was walking home from my coffee shop job, and I found a geranium just sitting on the ground in a busted pot. Like someone had tossed it from the balcony. I picked it up and brought it home with as much dirt as I could salvage. The little cast aside flower flourished in our care.

We then moved, and we were told by the landlords to not change anything about the landscaping. So, we now had roses to care for. I began adventures in unusual ways to garden, and found that tomatoes do well in five gallon buckets with holes drilled out of the bottoms, large amounts of carnivorous plants enjoy fish tanks, and moss gardens are the most delightful way to bring the outside in.

I’ve become quite the 'apartment gardener'.

I had a Ficus Tree in my bathroom.

A Dracienda plant, a very good, very healthy indoor plant.

And finally, my moss gardens! One is in a rum bottle, the other in a candle stand! There’s a container of Wheat Grass behind it.

These days, I’ve moved again, and I’m able to garden for real. So far this year, we’ve seen Black tulips come and go, sprouted lavender, grown African violets from a shred of a leaf, accidentally propagated Fluffy Ruffles, fed found bugs to our carnivorous plants, and learned how to water a lithops.

The garden is an exciting place to be indeed! That's why I love our new gardening-themed time management game. The Fifth Gate captures the fun of growing flowers and protecting gardens from invaders. It is quite a bit like growing flowers in a very short span of time! I’m big on plants, as you may have noticed from my previous game review posts, I love Plant Tycoon. I think this game brings together the fun of a time management game with a plant growing game. There’s strategy, adventure, speed, and “What do I need next?” element to the game that I really found I enjoyed!

If you’re into gardening like I am, I highly recommend you check out this game!

Next, I’ll write up instructions on how to create your very own desktop Moss Garden out of less than $10 of supplies from your local stores! You may even have some of these items in your home now, and not know it!

Stay tuned!

(Oh! And the way to water a lithops is.. don’t! It’s a type of cactus, and should never be watered when it’s flowering. They need to dry out 100% between watering! Happy growing!)

Written by: Corax_Vox
Games in this post: The Fifth Gate