It’s too hot to plant anything outdoors, and too hot to want to weed (though I should), and we have roofers putting on a new roof for our house this week, so it’s also a little painful walking around the garden right now because even though they’re trying to be careful, my garden is crowded enough and they need access sometimes and the inevitable result is crushed and sometimes dead plants, which is just, oof. (Two rosebushes dead so far.)
So I’m taking this week to mostly not look at the garden outdoors, which makes it a good time to check in on my somewhat neglected indoor plants, figuring out which ones need trimming or a little fresh soil. AND, I finally got around to what was supposed to be a winter project, but time ran away from me — the terrarium coffee table for the front room.
This is the last step in the transition from that small parlor (our house is a Victorian, with the traditional architecture of lots of tiny chopped up rooms) being the kids’ playroom to being a grown-up seating area. I wanted a cool coffee table in there, and I was tempted for quite a while by the idea of a resin river table. But I would’ve wanted to make it myself, and that would’ve been a big production and required learning a bunch of skills I don’t have yet.
In the end, I decided I’d like a terrarium table at least as much, and it’d be much easier (and cheaper too — the table I bought was $200).
Now, this table comes with a few big air holes; I think it’s designed so that, in theory, you could have a pet lizard or some such in there. (My daughter was agitating for a snake, until she realized she might have to feed it mice…) But I looked into that a little, and it seemed like it was going to require a lot of research, maybe adding heating elements, cleaning out litter regularly, and I’m not positive it’s really big enough anyway. If you want to do that, research carefully, please.
I went for a more classic ferny table instead. And then it was easy — just layer some rocks for drainage, some moss, some charcoal, some soil, and then plant, decorate (with stones and mushrooms in my case, though you could do little fairies or toy dinosaurs, or whatever you like), water, and enjoy.
Most terrariums, you only need to water about once a month, but this one might be big enough that it needs water a little more often — I’m going to check on it and see how it goes. But overall, happy project, satisfied.
Table is here: it also comes in an end table and a console table model. Assembly was straightforward, just take it step by step.
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