Inside the Greenhouse of My Dreams

The local university has a teaching greenhouse that's also open to the public during certain hours. I am OBSESSED with it, and during a recent college break my college kid kindly agreed to go there for the hundredth time with me. 

She and I love going places and looking at stuff the most!

My college student kid spent most of her childhood longing for a little pond. I could never quite figure out how to make it happen for her (my newest dream project that I probably won't make is a dry stream bed!), but if you give me a giant greenhouse, I will!

The corpse plant actually flowered this summer!

Someone local clearly has a homemade vanilla extract side hustle going on!

I really want a bird fountain, but we have West Nile in Indiana now, and I have a horror of adding more mosquito breeding spots to my already mosquito-heavy yard.

When I brought the kids here when they were little, they were always SO fascinated by the real cotton plant!

My teenager recently observed that I "don't like to do things alone," and while I was stung by her observation... she's not wrong. The problem is that once upon a time, I had two kids living at home who liked very different things from each other, but quite a lot of the same things as me, so I became used to always having a pal for every activity. Library podcast+craft night? I brought the big kid. Concert? Little kid. Play? Both kids, but the big kid would actually enjoy it. Shopping for novelty holiday items? Little kid. Museum? Big kid. Fancy coffee date? Little kid. Hike around the lake? Big kid.

So now I keep having these fun things that I want to do, but half of the time, when I think about it, there's nobody I know who would want to do the thing with me. I could make some friends, I guess, or wait until my big kid's next college break, or just suck it up and go by myself. So far, I've relied on the second solution, but I know I've got to work my way up to numbers 1 and 3, as well. Because earlier this week, I said to my little kid, "Hey, do you want to come with me to a concert featuring a band that you know nothing about but that I was flat-out obsessed with when I was 12 years old?"

The teenager said something along the lines of "That sounds sick. Bet"--I forget the exact words, but it was some kind of teenager-speak affirmative. I was SUPER stoked, because she is the best concert buddy... but then when I actually looked at the tickets, it suddenly occurred to me that the concert? It's in late August! By late August, this kid's possibly going to be away at college, too! Both of my pals, two-thirds of the people I talk to on a daily basis, are going to be out of my pocket and out in the real world by September.

Do you want to start taking bets on what my mid-life crisis is going to look like?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!