It’s Working! The Potted Roses Are Growing!

Hey Joshua, do you have any specific internal guidelines to keep in mind when it comes to investing in stocks that carry political risk, such as BP (with the lawsuits), Big Tobacco (regulations, taxation, etc.), and Big Banks (they need approval to return capital, etc.)?

The roses are looking luscious as all hell Joshua 🙂 Do you still have the standing order to the rose wholesaler or is it all home grown now? My thumb is getting a little bit greener every day - my home decoration budget (a glorious two dollars a week) accrued until I was able to go out and buy my first flowers. They're now happily blooming outside my front door, I have no idea what type they are or if they'll survive the winter or even the next week, but they've survived a full month under my care and that's an achievement for anything.

Thanks =) I'm trying to make a real go at this myself so I got rid of the regular wholesale shipments of roses. We'll see how it turns out but I'm optimistic; I love the idea of them coming from my own efforts and having started the plants small.

If your budget is limited, you can read a little about rose propagation and then join gardening forums online or, even better, if you see a rose you like, knock on the door of the person and ask if you can take a cutting. There are tons of guides online, but basically if you get the right size stalk from an existing plant, you can transform it into its own identical clone of the original parent plant, all for free.

I'm finding it is a really tight little community full of passionate people. When we came back from Disneyland, I was trying to identify some plants from my pictures and found that another gardener had already creating this reference guide! It's a lot of fun and way more rewarding than I ever thought possible. I get why people talk about their gardens now; if you've taken the time to make something grow, you get protective of it.

Keep me updated on how your adventures go! I imagine given the climate differences that you can grow all sorts of things that would just be a fantasy up here in my part of the world.

Hey Joshua! Here's your promised update. The question as to whether the flowers would survive the winter has been answered (I won't tell you the answer, but as a general hint - there's a reason they were on sale).

But I've been branching out to other plants. I've got a particular interest in Ethnobotany - the relationship plants have to people. The associations people give to plants - just look at the way lentils are described in the bible and all the symbolic properties assigned to them.

It coincided very nicely with my studies of Biochemistry. I've been studying photosynthesis and respiration in detail. I am in eternal awe at the intricate flow of chemicals and energy between plants and animals and the sun. Just thinking to myself, when I get under a cold blanket at night and it's warmed by my body heat - that's energy that a plant captured from the sun. We're just walking talking chemical reactions and the sun is our battery. Some people say that you take the beauty and awe out of something when you study it in detail, but for me, it has only increased it many times over.

So I've started growing plants that I've always been interested in and that people have a close relationship with. I've got a few cacti on the go and just got in some amazonian plants.

I took your advice! I was walking down the road that I've lived on for twenty years and in someones front garden was an enormous cactus that I've never noticed before and its precisely the right species I've been looking for. So I knocked on the door and asked for a cutting and the little old lady was more than happy to provide! I think that links into a mental model you mentioned before - that until you're specifically aware of something you can walk by it every day and not know it exists?

I've also planted a bunch of seeds for various plants. I can't wait to see if any germinate! I've been checking everyday even though I know its a 5 day minimum in the absolute best circumstances. To nourish a plant from seed to maturity - that's a beautiful relationship and one I'm aiming to have.

It's very very rewarding as you said - and very soothing. I just wish I knew more! I wish I could look into the cells of my cactus and see the reactions, watch it capture energy from the sun, watch the chain of reactions as it turns Carbon Dioxide into Glucose, bit by bit, reaction by reaction.

Ben

I'm just now getting back from a weekend of family dinners and other personal commitments I had promised, but I saw your comment while in the car on one of the trips and it absolutely made my night. (Especially now that I have added Ethnobotany to the list of things to study!) I wanted to wait until I was at an actual keyboard to write back instead of trying to type on an iPad and hope it made it through the somewhat spotty cellular reception in the Missouri countryside.

I know exactly what you mean about noticing the plants (the mental model is called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon). When we started growing roses, I suddenly spotted a rare, spice-scented rose bush only a few blocks from my house grown by a family! I'd driven by this place for years and never noticed it was there. It's like your eyes are opened.

Thank you for keeping me posted. This makes me so happy.

I'm thrilled it made your night - this reply made my day (and I sorely needed it today). It's been 5 days since I made that comment and 5 days since I sowed the cactus seeds. If any are going to germinate, I should be seeing them very soon!

Gardening has been so valuable to me emotionally. The day that I got a bunch of seeds in the mail I went to bed with a smile looking forward to sowing them the next day. Something felt off and I realized it was the first time in many many years that I have looked forward to anything happening the next day. It's a sad commentary I know, but I'm trying to focus on the positive side - that it happened at all and not the negative that it didn't happen until then.

I'm glad I could expose you to a new field of study - there must be very few you haven't explored by now! I'm still reading your articles and I take a lot of joy when you get so giddy about something you've learnt that you have to share it with the world! Although myself I prefer the hard physical sciences to the psychology and sociology you seem to favour (at least publicly). It's probably better that way - being exposed to disciplines that you aren't naturally attracted to is important.

The next major project will be growing a water plant! I'm looking into growing conditions for Nymphaea Caerulea - reading about how the Ancient Egyptians venerated this lotus just gives me the chills. I can almost see it, petals strewn around the ancient temples along the banks of the Nile. It's very unique in its physiology as well - it's one of the very few plants that can generate their own heat by it own internal metabolic processes and isn't subject to environmental whims.

Considering that even among the animal kingdom, only mammals and birds have that rare ability, for a plant to develop it makes it a very, very special plant indeed.

Hi Joshua,

It's been a while - 8 months! I still read your blog but I don't find myself with much time to comment these days. Maybe it's time for an update? The seeds I mentioned germinated and are now tiny little cactus seedlings (photo attached). My gardening habit has flourished, I've got a cornucopia of plants from all over the world growing in my loungeroom. I'd love to grow outside but the neighbours that I share a backyard with don't have much regard for things that grow (they picked up the container these seeds were in and shook them! Took me ages to find the seeds and put them near the top again).

On a personal note things have gone from strength to strength. I never really talked about my life when we'd chat here or on facebook, because there wasn't much to say. I was a high school dropout with no direction. When I left that last comment I was doing my HSC (High School Certificate) at an accelerated rate. I ended up getting the highest marks of anybody in a four suburb radius and the highest marks of anybody in the history of my TAFE (a TAFE is kind of like a mix between a vocational school and a community college).

The story seemed to resonate with people - someone with severe anxiety/panic who went on to succeed. There were articles written about me in the paper and I won a really prestigious prize (sorry I'm not bragging there's just no other way to describe it). Then i won another award and at the award ceremony I won a third award - the highest award that my TAFE (actually a grouping of them) gives out. So there's been another big wave of publicity.

The point of all that was that everything in my life has been turned around, thanks in no small part to your advice. You've said more than once that you learn from successful men and women and try to pass along their wisdom, well it worked for me! I just found out that a friend of mine who dropped out last year read the article in the paper about me and decided to come back to school - so the knowledge you're passing on is affecting people twice removed from yourself!

The prize money for both was considerable so I've finally got some money to invest. I've been reading about investing on your site for years but never had any. I'm not sure where to start learning - I guess I'll go find your about.com page and get better acquainted with the fundamentals.

I got into a really good university (I suppose it'd be the equivalent of an ivy league school, but our universities aren't as stratified) and I'm studying Medical Science. I'm on the track to becoming a doctor but I'm also really interested in Biological/Medical Research, so I'm hunting down research internships and scholarships.

My life is completely unrecognizable to how it was when I first started reading, thankyou for the part you played in its transformation.

Benjamin Jones / crabhooves

You must have ESP because today I was playing a game of Civilization (I installed a Belgium mod so I could roll out chocolate shops across the land but Attila keeps declaring war on me so I can't enjoy my peaceful little kingdom) and stopped for 3-4 minutes because you popped into my head. I wondered about the plants and how your life was going, hoping you were okay since I hadn't heard from you in awhile.

Words can't express how overjoyed I am at the moment. I'm so happy for you I feel like I could burst!!!!!! Thank you for taking the time to let me know. I'm proud of you and what you've done.