New Book: Carnivorous Plants for Kids

I just completed my new book, Carnivorous Plants for Kids.

I get many 4-8 year-olds that come to book signing events and my other book, A Life with Carnivorous Plants, may be a bit too detailed for them. Now their parents will have a choice. It's 50 pages with over 65 full-color photos and instructions on how to grow healthy Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, sundews, and butterworts. It's available now on Amazon in paperback and eBook for tablets, Kindle devices, and large phones.

My Relationship with Music

My love for music began when I was about 10 years old in the 1970s. My sister and I would record our favorite songs from Casey Kasem's Top 100 songs of the year countdown. Sometimes we'd catch them on the weekly Top 40. We had one of those old cassette recorders with a corded microphone attached, which we'd carefully position a few inches away from my mom's stereo console speakers. We only had a split second to recognize the song before we hit play and record simultaneously. Soon, our generic blank cassettes (TDKs if we could afford them) would be filled from side to side.

If we couldn't catch them on the radio (or didn't want to wait), we'd make a trip to Murphy's Department Store or Bramer Electric to pick up the latest hits on 45 rpm vinyl records. They'd always be locked behind a glass case. I remember hearing Abba's "Knowing Me, Knowing You" about a million times on our boom box during a 25-mile walk-a-thon, so I had to have a record of it when I got home.

It would be my mom in my teenage years that further influenced my love of music. She'd play everything from Lou Rawls to Patsy Cline to Donna Summer to the Tavares. If it wasn't on album, she'd have the 8-track.

Cassette tapes would be the media of choice for me for well over a decade after that. In college, I would pop in purchased cassette singles of my favorite hits from Madonna, Whitney Houston, George Michael, and more. My taste ranged from nearly every '70s hit to some of the '80s and '90s tunes. I loved disco music, of course.

But something changed in the mid to late 1990s. It began with the explosion of bands and songs in the late '80s. Suddenly, there was so much music out there that you couldn't keep up. I began to distance myself because, well, a lot of it was crap. When rap and hip-hop hit, that really tanked my love of music. It festered into the mainstream like a virus, and unlike disco, it has never stopped. Don't get me started on rap songs that begin with samples from hits from my era. It's nothing more than stealing.

I guess age also had lot of to do with my change in taste. I still like all my old songs, but I listen to them far less often. I do not have music playing in my car anymore, mostly because I despise commercials and my cassettes were eventually replaced with CDs.

There's also an emotional quality about listening to music from my past. When I have some wine and play my favorite songs, I am on the highest high. I LOVE them. I remember all the lyrics. And if I am out at a bar dancing, I will literally dance the night away. I do notice that the dance floor usually fills when I ask the DJ to play a hit that we all loved back in the day.

At home, I can get on an hours-long roll with a Youtube playlist that includes the Bee Gees, Diana Ross, Jody Watley, The Stylistics, The Carpenters, and more. Back when music was good.

There are several post-2000 tunes that I like. Keith Urban's "The Fighter," DNCE's "Cake by the Ocean," Katy Perry's "Chained to the Rhythm," and now Dua Lipa is hitting me hard with "Illusion" and "Training Season." Somehow I catch these songs through endless video scrolls on my phone. And yes, I like Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" and "Manchild." I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.

Still, music is not a mainstay in my life as much as it used to be. I have a boom box in my living room nook that plays classical throughout the day on a volume level so low you'd have to have your ears up to the speakers to hear it. It serves as soothing background fill. Also, in a world full of too many voices and too much chaos, silence is golden.

I think my reluctance to listen to music often also has a lot to do with how my creative mind reacts to too much stimulus. I definitely seek out the best music to fit my videos and documentaries, and I consider it to be the most important component. But music can be like a drug. It conjures up a lot of emotions (which is what it's supposed to do). But after over 60 years of life, the roller coaster of highs and lows can be a bit overwhelming. To me, like wine, it has to be enjoyed in moderation.

My Big Monstera Plant

Years ago, about 25 give or take, I drove to a nursery in Maryland to purchase a Monstera deliciosa, also known as the Swiss Cheese Plant because of the fenestrations (openings) in the leaves. I believe the location was Bell Nursery. I can still remember how hard it was to find at the time, even though I had one as a teenager.

When I was about 14 years old and living in Western New York, I used to travel on my bicycle to a place called Muchow's Nursery. That is where I purchased my first Monstera. Oh, it was SO beautiful. It was lush and full with symmetrical leaves, and the stem was mounted onto a large bark wood stake. I discovered it in a group plant section of the store that felt like a jungle oasis. I don't remember how I got it home, but it would be my first big plant purchase.

Well, this is when I learned about the importance of acclimation. I decided to place the plant on our balcony porch, which received some sun but nothing too harsh (so I thought) during the day. By evening all the leaves on the plant were scorched, and it would die soon after. I was devastated.

Fast forward over two decades later and that is when I purchased my current Monstera, and boy does it have a long history. For years I had it either indoors under moderate light, or outside hanging under a tree to protect it from direct sun. It didn't really grow that much, and the leaves were probably about 10"-12" long max.

The size the plant remained for many years. This is circa 1999-2000.

At one time, a bird built a nest and raised babies in the pot. I could view them through my bedroom window.

Baby birds nesting in the pot in 2005.

Then one day I decided to separate the plant, which had grown a bit straggly, into two pots. And that's when it triggered something miraculous. One of the two cuttings started putting out giant leaves. And by giant, I mean up to 30" in length! And this was even under moderate indoor lighting. The other half maintained leaves about the size of the original plant, and I would call it the sister plant.

I would affectionately call the big one "Monster" from then on. I wondered what had manifested for the plant to grow such showy leaves. In my mind I attributed it to the bird poop that may have entered into the soil during the early years. Who knows. But then I had a problem on my hands.

Monster would soon grow too large for the space it was in, and I'd have to saw off the top stem with two or three leaves and re-root it. I did this several times over 20 years to keep it balanced and not too unwieldy. Then I finally gave in and repotted it in a giant pot and placed it in the middle of the window. This forced me to ditch a chair and move my TV to the other side of the room.

And then...boom! It flowered the following year.

It is very rare for a Monstera to flower indoors, as they are more apt to do so in an outdoor humid environment. But I guess it found all the right parameters indoors to give it a go. It put out two large flowers the first year, and two smaller ones the next. I was amazed. The white spathes were about 10" long. The fruit would take a year to ripen after pollination.

Unfortunately, over the last year I've noticed that the plant has become more than sluggish. New leaves are small and it seems to have stopped growing altogether. A few of the older large leaves gradually turned yellow and I removed them. I had saved the plant from a thrip infestation two years ago, and I think the stress of that and the flowering usurped much of its energy. 

So this week I made the difficult decision to restart the top again, and divide the long stem into several cuttings. I also kept the remaining mother stump in the large pot. With such a large root system already established, it stands a good chance of creating new shoots in the original pot.

Let's hope and pray that, with six possible ways for Monster to regrow itself, I will enjoy the next phase of my treasured plant for many years to come.