A Vase for Mom

Last year I bought this “grow your own” cherry tomato kit from Home Depot. Let me explain this kit. The glass jar was already filled with dirt composite and a self watering terra-cotta stake. All I needed to do was open the seed bag that was provided, sprinkle said seeds into the jar of dirt, cover the seeds with the dirt provided, and fill the self watering terra-cotta stake once a week.

For someone like myself, I thought this kit would jump-start my gardening aspirations. I followed the directions to a T. Seriously, a week later, tiny little green leaves started sprouting from the dirt. And soon enough, a couple of months into it, the tomato plant started flowering and growing tomatoes.

I thought to myself, move over cactus, I can keep another plant alive.

I should’ve knocked on wood or something, because my luck ran out.

There were holes in the leaves!!! Some nasty ginormous green horned caterpillars were attacking my plant (just thinking about it gives me goosebumps). I’m okay with spiders, snakes, or things of that regard, but I hate and I mean hate squirmy crawly things (slugs, caterpillars, worms).

All of my “hard work” of weekly watering was irrelevant. These cherry tomatoes would never make it to my salad plate. I bought some organic spray to kill the suckers but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the thought of eating those tomatoes without feeling grossed out.

So, in the trash it went. I wasn’t entirely defeated though, I kept the mason jar.

After cleaning and disinfecting this jar multiple times, and trying to remove the thoughts that that jar was invaded by caterpillars with horns, I was able to upcycle the jar…and gift it to my mom.