No artificial flowers in my house

It doesn’t matter if you call them silk or plastic flowers — I really don’t like artificial plants in the house. I prefer live plants, indoors and outdoors. They are natural accents and they help rather than destroy the environment. We’ve started the process of decorating the house with indoor plants (the outdoor part is fine since the house came with a beautifully landscaped garden) and, yesterday, I bought three pieces of one of my all-time favorites — fortune plants.

They are sold by the stalk in most malls at horrendous prices but you can get them cheaper from plant sellers. They are cheapest in Chinatown but calculating the travel distance and the price of gasoline, I’m convinced I got a pretty good deal from a plant stall at Tiendesitas. These pieces have undergone some arrangement, the stalks having been braided and tied. The larger piece above was P200.00; the smaller ones below were P70.00 each.

Fortune plants require very little maintenance. You just need to keep the roots moist so they don’t wither. You can put them in soil or in water sans soil. According to the plant vendor, they grow slower in soil and faster in water without soil. If you want them to grow an inch or so each year, better keep them in soil. If you want them to grow taller faster, get rid of the soil. Thing is, if they grow tall, the arrangement might be ruined.

No, the vases didn’t come with the fortune plants.

We were at the Home Depot late yesterday afternoon scouring the place for matching floor and table lamps for the living room and the search was getting really frustrating. We were about to start the long drive home when we passed a lamp store we though we hadn’t visited before. Turned out we had when we were looking for outdoor lighting fixtures. We didn’t find any lamp we liked but there were these gorgeous vases on display. Problem was they weren’t for sale.

According to the guy tending the store, they were just there for display purposes. Export overruns, he said, but the regular items were available in their branches at Glorietta and Mall of Asia. Oh, come on, I said. We live in Antipolo. He wasn’t going to make us drive all the way to Glorietta or the Mall of Asia, right? A little cajoling and he made a phone call (to his boss, I presumed). I got my pair of vases at P150.00 each.

They’re clear glass covered with resin and decorated with pieces of colored glass. I’m sure they weren’t meant to serve as vases but that was what I wanted them for. If I should decide to get rid of the soil and keep in fortune plants in water with some white pebbles, these vases would be ideal. Meanwhile, while we hunt for good-looking pebbles, they stay in wet soil.