*Sigh* You just have to laugh about it all really.  Except S.A.D. makes that hard sometimes.  Which is why you sometimes need to turn to outside help (and not the sunshine kind) to help you laugh during the dark and dreary days.

My outside help came in the form of a short email sent to the contact desk at work. It simply said “I think you might like this” followed by a YouTube link.  No name, no email, nothing else. I clicked expecting the worst, or at least a bit of soft core porn. But truly, Ladies and Gentlemen, there is serendipity in the universe. 

The video was one of a set of videos about, wait for it, How To Care For Your Opossum. How awesome is that? And the format is great! Imagine your cat lady great aunt – or maybe the dag lady one. Not the scary one who will end up on Hoarders.  No, the one with one pet that they pay WAY TOO MUCH attention to.  The pet that replaces human interaction. Yeah, that one. Now instead of a moody cat or a yappy dog, picture an opossum as the pet. That is the heart of these videos. It is satire at its finest.

So, for your laughing-to-get-away-from-the-snow-and-ice-outside-and-I-can’t-garden pleasure… I present ME Pearl’s Guide to a Proper Opossum Pedicure (be sure to check out all the other opossum care videos as well! You can waste a whole afternoon on them):

We don’t like to admit it, but hate more than any other emotion inspires us to change something. When you hate your job, you go get a new one. When you hate your hair, you get a haircut. When you hate the fact that Johnny Depp is apparently not in the market for a 34 year old, slightly frumpy woman from Cleveland… well there is not much you can do about that except to watch Pirates of the Caribbean one more time.

But, back to the main point. Hate, like nuclear power and American Idol, can be a good thing when used properly.

There are several things I hate about my garden.  For example, I hate the Canada thistle. Every year, I try to get rid of the stuff and every year, it apparently thinks that my garden is a prime location for Canada thistle family reunions.  I hate it so much, that this year, I swear that I will diligently snip the leaves off of every Canada thistle that I see.

I hate the weigela on the side of my house. It has been there for as long as I have owned the house and I am sure that the previous owner thought it was a brilliant plant to place in the narrow confines between my house and my neighbors, but I am here to tell them (9 years later) that this was not the case.  Yes, I am that lazy that for 9 years I have cursed and hated that damn bush and did nothing about it (I had other things that I hated more). This year, that will change. It is now at the top of my hate list.

I hate the fact that I cannot seem to grow zucchini. While the rest of the world grows so much zucchini that even the food banks in August have a hard time giving it away, I have not managed to grow a zucchini in well nigh over 5 years.  That stops this year.  I have found neem oil and vine borers better beware.  I am coming for them.

This year is going to be a great year in my garden.  I have the power of hate on my side and I plan to use it to its fullest extent.  May the hate be with you as well.  Sing it with me “Hate something, change something, hate something, change something, make something beeeeetter!”

…Your vegetable crisper drawer holds more vegetable seeds than actual vegetables

…When you go to the circus and step in elephant dung and your first thought is “I wonder if that would be good on the garden” and your second thought is “I wonder if they have a “U-haul it free” program.

…If you have convinced your fiancé that The Svalbard Global Seed Vault makes a really good honeymoon destination.

…When you buy a house, your realtor’s checklist of gotta haves to look for before showing you a house contains no bishop weed on property, good southern light, and organic material rich soil (bonus if you provided a Tupperware container of desired soil type).

…You ever did not a pay a bill because you had spent your money buying a plant or seeds.

…If you spent more on plants than groceries in one month.

…Your kitchen cooking utensils also serve as gardening implements.

…You buy potting soil by the bale.

…You regularly trash pick for plastic pots and seedling cells.

…Killing slugs is a pleasurable and fulfilling pastime.

…Accidentally ruined pants because you mysteriously found yourself weeding.

…You have ever rescued a plant from an abandoned lot, building or yard.

…You have ever peed in your garden in an attempt to keep deer away.

…You have hired a shaman to cast a spell in an attempt to keep deer away.

…You have spent more on deer repellents than plants in an attempt to keep deer away.

…You have just said “fuck it” and have run out into your front yard in a nightgown holding a loaded semi-automatic weapon and chased a deer down the street.

Feel free to add your own!

Case in point, I was at Goodwill the other day (I love Goodwill. It is even better that my Goodwill is also next to a Marc’s – which sadly for all of you non Clevelanders, is an awesome but only local chain) and found the coolest old bottle. The cap says Gallo (as in the wine maker) but the bottle is shaped like an apple, with a window.

For some reason, when I saw it I thought “that would make a really neat aquarium.” Yeah, logic and my bright ideas don’t really mesh sometimes.

But I was determined and I plunked down the $4 for the bottle (Goodwill is getting pretty pricy these days) and brought it home. My husband, the supportive, dream crusher that his is, immediately informed me that with no way to aerate the water and only a narrow opening at the top, my fantasy fish would be dead in a week.

Plus, he reminded me of another issue that I have. (If you are a member of PETA, skip to the next paragraph) I tend to forget to feed small animals that don’t make noise of some kind.  Which thus far, has only been fish. We are an anti-hamster household and the dog, cat and children get pretty noisy if I don’t feed them.

But, for the record, while I have not been able to keep fish alive in the house, I have been very successful at keeping them alive in my small pond. My secret to keeping them alive is to simply forget that they are there (which means that I get to be delighted every time I look at my pond.  Oh lookie – FISH!)

So how do the feral fish do it, how do they survive summer and winter in my pond that has no aeration system and no fish flakes?  Because I have pond plants.

I then started thinking about these spheres I saw as a kid that were marketed as self contained world. There was a plant and a fish. What happened after the fish died was a mystery to me, but in theory this tiny aquarium had all that a fish needed to survive.

So off to the pet store I went.  I bought a $2.50 fish and $25 in aquarium plants. Such is the addiction that afflicts a gardener.

What I found odd was that a great many of the “aquatic” plants they had there were in fact houseplants that had simply been submerged. Luck bamboo, what I would swear was hosta and peace lilies to name a few.

But they also had genuine aquatic plants. As a matter of fact, a significant portion of my plant costs came out of the fact that I bought a marimo – AKA Japanese aquatic moss ball.  It looks a little like a tribble that was exposed to too many gamma rays.

So, thus began my experiment in enclosed aquatic gardening. So far Castle (the fish – as in Little Plastic) is a happy and productive goldfish. I bet this week she has swam around the bottle at least 300 times and has yet failed to be amazed that there is an angry tribble in the water with her.  I think now that a week has gone by, and Castle is not dead or swimming upside down (as I have told my children in the past that fish are apt to do) that this experiment looks to be successful.

Now, if I could just train my goldfish to grow some underwater tomatoes, I would really have an amazing aquarium terrarium.

But, by lucky chance, you can watch them now. Below is the Praying Mantis film. The rest can be seen here at the Sundance site. Prepare to be educated and amazed. Arousal is purely optional.