Being bored with this never-ending damp cold weather I decided to bring a little summer cheer into the house.
At Christmas I had muted that I would quite like a terrarium and my son in his own unique way decided that as a small additional gift he would create what must be the smallest terrarium ever. He took an old light bulb, removed the filament and turned a small wooden plug for the lid. he then turned a small stand for it to stand on. At first I thought I would plant it with an air plant but research implied that it would be hard to find an air-plant small enough so I decided to go for a non-living beach effect using a few of the hundred of shells I have collected over the years.
First of all I dried out some sand, leaving it in a dish on the boiler for a week. I added some to the bulb using a paper funnel and it turned out that this was the easiest bit of the operation. Having selected some interesting tiny shells I then tried to place them artistically in the bulb. It quickly turned out that my tweezers were not long enough to manoeuvre the shells so I ended up using chopsticks. Luckily having spent just under 3 weeks in Japan last year I'm not too bad with chop sticks but even they felt clumsy in moving tiny shells around.
Anyway, I don't think it is too bad an effort for my first attempt. We are now pondering where we could obtain larger used bulbs from which might be a better size for air-plants and small ferns.