In the end of April I visited Frankfurt for a weekend trip with my family. My cousin is working there now so she promised to be our guide! I love Germany and since I was 2 years old, we have visited the country at least once a year with my family. Here are some pictures from our recent trip.

In May Day (1.5.) it's traditional in some parts of Germany to do a Maiwanderung, meaning a May hike. I don't know the origin of the event, but in the present it mostly mean getting a bunch of drink with you and walking around the nature or city with your friends, drinking at the same time. In the Rhein-wineregion there's also a Weinwanderung held, in which local wineries offer taste offerings for the thousands of hikers. It was a rainy day and bit of a drive to the start point of the official Weinwanderung, so we did our own by walking a hiking route in a forest and some vineyards.

There was so many of these snail on the trail and it turned out we should've probably killed them instead of marveling them since they were Spanish slugs and eat pretty much everything in sight.

We we really hungry after the hike (which had ended in us practically rolling down a vineyard hill because the path we walked suddenly ended), so we visited a restaurant buried deep inside the forest and vineyards. It was next to a parking lot where a lot of hikers, including us, had left their cars, so the place was quite crowded. Despite that, the service was good and the beer even better! The star of the meal, although, was this salad I got. It was simply stated as a mixed salad with turkey strips on the menu but WOW, was it good! I'm not lying when I say it was the best salad I have ever eaten.

'

The view from my cousin's balcony was a beautiful city view with some lovely, still light-green trees mixed with clean cars. This trip really charged my batteries and I can't wait to visit again soon!

After looking at that picture of the salad again, I'm really craving one now. Where have you had your best salad? Comment below!

That's it, I've officially lost all control. Yesterday I just wandered into a hardware/gardening store and left with yet another new plant! But I had planned buying it earlier, so it doesn't count, right? (It still does.)

On the way home

The plant exactly is peperomia deppeana. I already mentioned wanting it in the Houseplant-plans -post so I could plant it in the orchid terrarium, since it also requires airy soil and humidity like phalaenopsis does. So after getting peperomia home, I started to scape the terrarium!

I had a bit of orchid potting mix I got from my mom and it was basically mulch, leca and a bit of soil. I wanted some height differences to make it more interesting, so I dumped an empty egg carton there, next to the bowl full of water (to provide humidity). Then I covered the bottom in the potting mix. I also repotted the peperomia in a mix of regular potting soil and orchid potting mix. Hopefully it'll be airy enough! I left the plant in the plastic pot from and put it in the corner next to the egg carton.

Then begun the hardest part: mounting my miniature phalaenopsis. I got these pieces of bark from a forest near my parent's house, along with some moss. I removed the phal from the pot and cut some of the dried up roots. It had clearly been in the pot for quite long, since most of the roots were curled up in the bottom! Well, what else can you except from an IKEA plant... I was so scared of damaging the good roots that m hands shook the whole time. But I put some moss on the curve of the bark and then just adjusted the phal on top of it so that about half of it roots go to the other side and half to the other. Then I tied some yarn around it so it won't fall down when I lift it to the tank. All well so far!

The other stem of flowers had already dried up, the other one is still doing fine

I had some pieces of bark and moss left so I arranged them to the tank in a way that actually pleases me quite much! I still have to get a cover glass to trap the humidity more, but so far so good!

 What do you guys think? Have you made any kind of terrarium (succulent, cacti, orchid) lately?

Instead of just showing my plants as I promised, I'll do a whole flat tour! This is a 34 squaremeter student apartment me and my boyfriend rented last fall.

Here is the kitchen. We live in the first floor and the kitchen window is pointing straight towards the walk between the buildings, so we put a smaller lace-curtain on the window to get a bit more privacy. The main colors of the kitchen are white, green and brown and it's also the place where most of my plants are in:

Basil and a bit beaten down mint

Monstera deliciosa leaves, let's see if they root

My orchid terrarium in progress: some moss, wood and a miniature phalaenopsis

Here's the bedroom, the room where we spend most of our time. We have our laptops, game consoles, TV, books and weights here so the kitchen is mostly used only for cooking and eating (sometimes we even eat in the bedroom). The colors here are blue, white and gray. The dressers under the TV and consoles need a coat of white paint so they would fit in better, and that's actually my project for this summer.

Here's the newest addition to our plant family: a wonderful yucca palm! It's super cute and it fit perfectly on the shelf when I removed one of the shelves from it. The little ducks are vintage children toys that make a clicking noise when pressing the beak and they are the cutest things ever! We got them from our Frankfurt trip earlier this month.

I didn't photograph the mudroom and the bathroom now because in my opinion they are just not very interesting. Hope you enjoyed this post!

Hi again!

My obsession with aquaria and houseplants it's raising it's head in our flat. I got a 54l (12g) empty tank for free and my grandpa gave me his old aquarium light for that. After coming to the conclusion that turning it into a betta/shrimp tank would be a bad idea maintenance-wise, my plans settled for an orchid terrarium, with a miniature phalaenopsis and peperomia.

+

Here is a phone-pic of the tank

I started to plan out getting houseplants to the rest of the apartment too. As you can see from the previous post, I already have an aloe vera (which, by the way, is suffering from something. I probably have to repot it.) and then I have a cowslip, which is probably never going to bloom again. Few weeks back I also started a small herb garden, currently with mint and basil.

But really wanted something bigger than those, something that immediately catches your eye and brings green and exotic style to the room. I settled on getting some kind of palm, probably a kentia palm or a parlour palm. I also clipped some leaves from my mom's monstera deliciosa (which is actually quite monsterous) so I can plant them in the near future.

I will post pictures when my plans take a step forward!