Replying to my own post with my experience loving a plant.
The air in prison is cool and dry. We don’t have access to larger pots. We only get partial sun for a few hours through our little cell window.
Keeping a plant alive means improvising materials to fix the cheap pot, curating every stem and leaf like a bonsai tree to keep it small, and replacing soil.
Replacing soil isn’t allowed. We’d be searched before we went outside, then again more thoroughly before coming back inside. But, a few inmates ran a “store”. It’s like Red from Shawshank, with predatory prices and interest, enforced with third party physical violence.
For my cellmate and myself, I bought a a pair of $20 phone cards from commissary to pay the store for enough soil to fill two pots. Then, I taught my cellmate that we could split the worm.
The store’s owner asked me what I wanted it for. Much later I think I’d figured out how he got it done. I also had educational books coming in, was giving them away, and all the stores just let me have it.
Snitches get stitches. Stay in school.
Assortment of books I “imported”:
many Bibles, God on the Dock, Capital, The Conquest of Bread, Animal Farm, 1984, Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath.
Replying to my own post with my experience loving a plant.
The air in prison is cool and dry. We don’t have access to larger pots. We only get partial sun for a few hours through our little cell window.
Keeping a plant alive means improvising materials to fix the cheap pot, curating every stem and leaf like a bonsai tree to keep it small, and replacing soil.
Replacing soil isn’t allowed. We’d be searched before we went outside, then again more thoroughly before coming back inside. But, a few inmates ran a “store”. It’s like Red from Shawshank, with predatory prices and interest, enforced with third party physical violence.
For my cellmate and myself, I bought a a pair of $20 phone cards from commissary to pay the store for enough soil to fill two pots. Then, I taught my cellmate that we could split the worm.
(do) I wanna know how you got the worm(?)
The store’s owner asked me what I wanted it for. Much later I think I’d figured out how he got it done. I also had educational books coming in, was giving them away, and all the stores just let me have it.
Snitches get stitches. Stay in school.
Assortment of books I “imported”: many Bibles, God on the Dock, Capital, The Conquest of Bread, Animal Farm, 1984, Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath.