Nothing Strange Here

Mix hydrogen peroxide into the water you give them! I mix it into the watering can and typically use approximatly 2tsps hydrogen peroxide per 36oz of water. It kills off pests in the soil and will help prevent root rot if you accidentally over water. It also adds more oxygen to the water, and plants really need that! And use room temperature water unless you know for sure a plant likes cold water. For most plants, water that is too hot or too cold will send it into shock and can kill it.

Bottom water bottom water bottom water. Place the plant in a bowl or tray and then pour water into the bowl. The plant will only soak up what it needs, and when the top of the soil barely damp it’s got enough! It also helps keep the soil from compacting which allows air to get to the roots, which helps prevent root rot and gives the plant the oxygen it needs.

If you think it’s thirsty, feel the leaves. The best way to tell if a plant needs water is by checking its leaves. Get to know what the leaves feel like when you first buy it, as it is probably well watered. When you feel it’s been long enough between waterings check the leaves. Does it feel normal? Good, it doesn’t need water for now! Does it feel easily bendable, thinner, softer, or squishier than normal? Give it some water! Remember that it is easier for a plant to come back from being UNDER watered than over watered. If you feel unsure, give it another day or two.

If you still think it’s thirsty after feeling its leaves, feel the soil. Stick your finger down into the soil about 1-2 inches. If the dirt feels wet or damp don’t water it! Wait until the soil is dry 2-3 inches down. (This does not apply to succulents and cacti. Typically wait for the soil to be dry all the way through and leave it dry until the plant shows signs of thirst.

Baby plants are WAY harder to care for than larger plants because they do not have much of an established root system. Its best if you try bigger plants when first starting out (4-6in pots) because they will be more forgiving of mistakes.

Light! Light is one of the most important things to a plant, that’s how they get their energy! Look up the light conditions for a plant BEFORE you buy it, (even if its just a quick google in the store) so you know if you have the right lighting for it. You can do everything right with watering and caring for a plant but if its in the wrong light it will die.

Higher humidity is more important in the winter than in the summer (unless it is a plant that needs a lot of humidity like a fern). While you may not have to worry about humidity in the summer, using a heater in the winter dries out the air in your home very fast. If possible get a small humidifier for your plants. You don’t need anything fancy, I have a $10 one from Target and it does the job fine.

Don’t worry if your plants stop growing in the winter, just like trees loose their leaves, plants go into hibernation too and do not produce as much new growth. During these cold winter months (and spring… and fall….) don’t water as often. Since they don’t grow as much, they don’t need near as much water. Do not use fertilizer during this period either, the plant does not need it and more than likely the fertilizer will just burn the plant’s roots since it won’t absorb it.

Try to give them individual love and attention. Pet their leaves! Give them lil kissies! Play nice music for them! The best way to care for a plant is to learn what it wants individually. Name them if this helps and don’t treat them all the same! Learning what each plant wants is the most rewarding part of horticulture. You can have two of the exact same plant and they will have different needs, its incredible! Let their little personalities shine through.

GUYS. THERE WAS DRIVE-THROUGH IN ANCIENT ROME. FINDING OUT THIS ALONE IS WORTH THE COST OF MY MASTERS IN HISTORY.

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You just tagged me, and it pushed so many buttons, because our research for “Games” (optioned twice so far, though not produced either time) showed us that when it comes to comparing Ancient Roman eating habits with now - and particularly the US - the similarities are remarkable.

The usual name (though see below) was a “thermopolium”, meaning “Hot Food Here”, and archaeologists estimate there were about 300 thermopolia in Pompeii and Herculaneum.

This sounds like a lot, but lower-class Roman tenement dwellings (”insulae”) were usually just somewhere to sleep; there was no bathroom, no toilet and no kitchen. So besides their work all other parts of citizens’ lives, from bathing and eating to peeing and pooping, also happened away from home, in non-domestic facilities like public baths, public latrines (the Guilds of Fullers and Tanners thank you for your contributions) and eating-houses like thermopolia, tabernae and popinae.

The archaeologists think these three words may have been interchangeable, or subject to dialect variations, but saying that Ancient Rome had Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is as close to true as makes no never-mind. There were no Roman “fine dining” restaurants, since meals of that category would be eaten at home with invited guests as part of social networking, but though upper-class Romans looked down on the D, D-I & D establishments, there’s written evidence that they ate from them regardless.

Think of them as a cross between fast-food outlets, gastropubs and tapas bars.

Here’s a reconstruction:

Here are a few examples of real ones, all similar but each different:

Pots of prepared food were set in those counter recesses. I haven’t found out if there was a way to keep it hot, but the design looks like there might have been a charcoal brazier at one end sending hot air through the counter-space on the same principal as a hypocaust (Roman under-floor central heating), otherwise why make the counter of stone rather than wood?

@dduane​ suggests it may be because old bricks and broken rubble were easier to find, but IMO these were built with more care than just “because it’s cheap”.

The second two have a side that obviously faces the street (they would all have done, it’s just more obvious in those pics) which is where takeaway would have happened. Customers wanting to eat in would have moved along the indoor side of the L-shaped counter.

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As for takeaway, it didn’t include Drive-In or Drive-Through as we’d know it. Roman cities were almost entirely pedestrian so Walk-In or Walk-Through was more likely, but there might be a certain amount of Stop-In-Front-For-Takeaway by hungry deliverymen, ignoring vulgar cries in Vulgar Latin along the lines of “get that bloody cart out of the bloody way!”

Even then it wouldn’t happen at peak times since, except for unusual circumstances, deliveries were restricted to and had to be completed within set hours before and after the business day. Roman writers including Martial and Pliny bitch about being woken at early o’clock by squeaky axles, braying mules and swearing drivers as fresh provisions arrived for sale.

This reconstruction shows the ruts in the road for cart-wheels…

…and these are the real thing, which along with the frequent crossing-stones restricted what size of vehicle could enter the city: local delivery wagons drawn by a single mule, yes, out-of-town heavy freight drawn by a yoke of oxen, no.

There’s a longstanding chicken-and-egg argument over what came first, carts making ruts in soft lava rock, or ruts cut into rock to control carts. Since ruts of the same size (supposedly recycled in the Industrial Revolution as the size of Standard Gauge railway track, YMMV on that) appear on roads in other parts of the Empire which aren’t made of soft lava rock, my two sesterces is on deliberate cutting.

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Okay, so what kind of food did these places serve? Those keep-hot pots (dolias) would have contained vegetables like onions, carrots, leeks, cabbage, etc., also stews of beans, lentils, fish and some cheap kind of meat; since this was poor or at least not-rich people’s food, that meat would have been the inner bits most modern diners don’t want to know about. Not that organ meat worried the Romans; they were nose-to-tail diners in the way that was common throughout history until about 150 years ago.

This 1st-century terracotta relief supposedly shows a basic meal of fish, bread (top left), possibly cheese (bottom left) and an egg (bottom right); there’s a knife (top) and spoon (bottom) to eat with, a cup and a pannier for drink. So far so good.

However IMO what it may show is a kitchen table in the classic cookery demo top-down view. Those two fish are about to be cut up using the knife (top centre right with a curved horn(?) handle and possibly a sheath) then cooked in the pan on the right. There’s a spoon to stir and taste (bottom right), and the egg, bread and cheese(?) are either other ingredients or meant to accompany the pieces of cooked fish when they go into the bowl at top centre left.

Okay, I’m guessing; but it’s a fair guess. :->

Fast food would also have included bread, fresh and dried figs and other fruit, olives, cheese, honey, shellfish, eggs raw and hard-boiled, dried and smoked meat and fish, olive oil and, inevitably, garum, the (in)famous Roman fish sauce to which the entire Empire was addicted. They had FACTORIES to make the stuff though like tanneries, they were built well away from human - or at least wealthy - habitation.

Internet pages delight in focussing on the “Ew, rotted fish guts!” aspect; the Romans for their part would have looked at tomato ketchup and said “hang on, tomatoes are deadly nightshade in a party frock” before falling on them with delight because Ancient Roman recipes suggest a real fondness for sweet-sour. Anyway garum’s not rotted, it’s fermented with lots of salt like Worcestershire and Tabasco.

You know how modern foodstuffs are packaged in distinctive containers so you can spot them easily? Garum did it too.

Some Roman fast-foods were surprisingly familiar: kebabs (meats grilled on spits, including more inner bits); pizza (more of a foccacia or flatbread, drizzled with oil, sprinkled with herbs, topped with cheese and / or bits of meat or smoke-cured salami); burgers (grilled chopped-meat patties using yet more inner bits) and hot-dogs (various sausages including the famous Lucanian Sausage, smoked pork with herbs and pine-nuts).

We don’t know if Roman bakers produced small loaves - what we’d know as buns - for the sausages and burgers; it’s more likely that if eaten modern-style, they’d be seasoned with pepper and a dash of garum, then rolled in a flatbread wrap or put into a split section of the standard Roman panis quadratus loaf, like these on a Pompeii fresco…

…or this actual loaf, somewhat overbaked by Mount Vesuvius.

As mentioned before, there was no ketchup, but there were several kinds of mustard from mild to pungent, including ones made with water, wine, vinegar, honey and of course garum.

The Romans didn’t have popcorn (like tomatoes, maize was still an Atlantic Ocean away) but roasted crunchy chickpeas - in new leek’n’garum flavour! - were a direct equivalent.

Some of what follows is known historical fact; some of the rest is logical extrapolation from research for our “Games” project.

It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.

“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now.”

Pooh looked and Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were There. No more; no less.

Cows have similar emotional range as dogs. They display boldness, shyness, fearfulness and even playfulness.