This thread is about real or supposed reanimation. Do you keep plants? Have you succefully recovered a rotting plant? How did it happen? What about animals? Have you rescued a cat or a dog? Maybe some other animal?
We have a small garden, and once the growing-season starts, I usually spend a couple of hours a week doing general maintenance on it: watering, mowing, raking, pruning, etc. This summer I'll be having fun finally chopping down and digging out a
Robinia that died a couple of years back — possibly as a result of my over-pruning it (but that was OK, because the neighbours had started to complain about it shading their garden — hence the over-pruning!).
We keep potted plants on the terrace, windowsills, and outside the front door, and occasional (usually gifted) houseplants indoors, but tending to those is usually my wife's preserve (routine daily maintenance is not my strong suit: if it was left to me, they'd likely dry out pretty quickly!).
When I was a kid/teen, we had 2 cats and later also a dog (my mum's idea, even though we both pointed out beforehand that she didn't have time to look after it*). None of them were technically rescued animals, but they did all come from litters of pets owned by my mum's friends/acquaintances.
Now that I've settled down, I'd love to have a cat (or 2!) again, but unfortunately my wife is allergic to cat-fur (I'm also quite keen on seeing birds round the garden, so that's another strike against the idea). And since we both work away from home, 6-9 hours a day, 3+5 days a week, a dog's not a hugely practical option either; they're pack-animals at heart, so we'd really only be able to take good care of one if it came to work with us. That said, my wife's employer certainly
declares itself to be dog-friendly. (I have no idea if mine has made any ruling either way, though in 13 years here, I've only met 2 dogs: one of those belongs to the current owner's wife, who's not an employee — and the other I've only seen once, a week or two back, when our punk-rocking IT guy brought his in, because his wife was away from home that day).
When they were younger, our boys occasionally asked about having rabbits/guinea pigs, but neither of us were keen on that idea (we suggested mice/gerbils instead, but
they weren't interested in that), and they haven't asked recently.
Do you agree that wooden furniture makes your flat feel more vital? What about other eco materials?
Yes, definitely agree on that. I've always preferred solid wood furniture, even if only something soft/cheap like pine. And when we're buying MDF-based flatpack furniture/ shelving to save money, I'd also prefer a natural(-looking) woodgrain(-style) laminate rather than a single-colour obviously-plastic laminate.
Do you do anything, like keeping fish, pets or something else to avoid the feeling of being boxed in in urban, plastic claustrophobic space?
Aside from the costs, there are lots of potential/ actual eco-ethical problems with buying/ keeping tropical (marine) fish. Might be an interesting exercise to try constructing a (semi-)closed aquarium-ecosystem of local/native species, and/or sink a pond, but our current property doesn't really offer the space for either of those.
I don't really feel boxed-in by urban sprawl, though. We live right on the edge of a small town, with fields and a (semi-natural) pond <100 m down the road, small patches of woodland only a little further away than that, larger patches within easy biking-distance, and the nearest edge of the
Lueneburger Heide only ~10 km away.
My wife would
really like for us to live by the sea, though. Maybe after we retire...
