Please send photos of your dead house plants to nanigraddon@gmail.com

Cactus Wobble

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This one time I tried to go swimming after a storm but when I got there, I realized that there were bits of cactus in the water, so I decided to save my swim for a less spikey day.

Then one day I got home to find that one of my housemates had planted one of the sea cactus in a pot, before we knew it the sea cactus had sprouted and was ready to join the other dubious house plants. Ever since we have been stuck inside, I have become more obsessed with the growth of plants and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Green is a clean color, the same housemate once told me about a green VW Van she saw. It belonged to two tradies who were leaning against it smoking cigarettes. That van she said somehow made those cigarettes look clean, and that is the power of green.

Perhaps it is for the same reason that we paint houses green in the bush, just so we can trick ourselves into thinking that we live clean and green, and that the mid-tone, olive green, that is virtually non existent naturally, is an adequate disguise for a house.

My friend’s old housemate said he wasn’t allowed to eat meat in the house, every now and then she’d come home whilst he was in the middle of consuming a tuna sandwich. I told him he should have hidden behind a houseplant, because it doesn’t really matter what you’re eating if you’re standing next to something green, isn’t that why tuna tins are green? It’s why my bin is green it hides the grease from that empty packet of bacon. Perhaps it’s why there are so many plants in Sydney’s inner west.

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Dancing with the Lettuce