I’m Laura, a life-long biology and botany geek living in Burlington, VT. I spent every summer I could mucking about in ponds and rivers searching out plants and wildlife. My mother usually threw away my clothes every August. I went to marine biology camp with the Museum of Science in Boston between middle and high school while my classmates hung out at the city pool. Yep, I was *that* kid.
When I went to college and had a space to myself, I started in on building aquariums. I began with the standard goldfish and live bearer tanks, and then moved on to paludariums for frogs and newts, a large scale planted freshwater tank, a saltwater reef tank, and a pond I built in my living room for my two turtles Rodney and Phil. Rodney was a gift from my mother when I was six. Funny story about turtles…At that time neither of us (nor apparently the pet store that sold her to us) realized that painted turtles live an average of 40 years. Rodney (a female, btw, since what 6 year old know how to sex turtles? Not this one.) has traveled through college, across state lines, into multiple homes and apartments, and through two marriages with me for the last 33 years. Her tank mate Phil is an 18 year old Red Eared Slider I took on as a rescue my junior year in college. He’d been purchased from a local pet store and then returned a month later with shell rot and a respiratory infection from sitting in cold, dirty water with no UV lighting. After many months of rehab he was right as rain and is well on his way to seeing me into my 60’s. Other tanks have come and gone, but I’ve had at least one going for decades. And I love them. Building tanks is one of my great joys, as is raising plants – the rarer the better. For several years I kept a large orchidarium that was one of my prized possessions. One sad day when I left town for a weekend, my heat went out and my beautiful collection was destroyed. I’ve stuck to slightly less heat sensitive specimens since…
These days I’ve been working on projects that involve both plants and aquariums and pollinating and germinating seeds from as many of my plants as possible. Enough people have asked me to share the step by steps that I figured it was time for a blog. Hope you enjoy!
tales of a plant geek 