Welcome to: SCIENCE 2: The Re-Sciencing!

Also known as "Science 2: Electric Boogaloo."


That, as you no doubt guessed, is a "Poinsettia In A Can." And it is also...

THE RETURN OF....

SCIENCE!!!!!!

Man, I really need to learn how to do graphics. Imagine how great that would have been if it had been flashing and glowing, as it was in my mind.

But, then, I don't need a lot of "hype" and "glitz" and "knowledge" and "facts" to introduce what will be easily my most amazing Adventure In Science since I ate that Twinkie, a SCIENTIFIC Experiment I am calling:

Poinsettia...

In A Can...

OF SCIENCE!!!?!!

Okay, maybe that needed a little bit of glitz.

Yesterday, as is our usual routine, Mr Bunches and Mr F and I stopped off at the Dollar Store to get some necessaries like "A ceramic house" (Mr Bunches has 9, now), a "Roo" Pez Dispenser (Mr F likes the dispensers, I get the candy) and the like, and on our way to the checkout, we stumbled across a shelf containing little rows of cans.

The first can I saw said "Real Snow In A Can," which (a) seemed doubtful and (b) was likely to be just water by this point, so I passed on it, but I was immediately enthralled with the idea of a Poinsettia In A Can and bought it because there's really no way that phrase can turn out to be anything but awesome.

I didn't even read the directions until we were in the car, at which point I'd realized it was more than just awesome, it was awexome, a word I'm trying to get to catch on so if you'd kindly use it once or twice and pay me a nominal fee I'd appreciate it.

It turns out that Poinsettia In A Can is pretty much the only product left in the world that is exactly what it purports to be, more or less. It's a can... with poinsettias in it.

Only problem is, you have to grow them. Which is actually no problem for me because as you know, I'm pretty much the best gardener ever provided that you judge me based not on effort or results but on what I imagined the garden would be.*

*Mr Bunches' Victory Garden, by the way, as yet has produced no sunflowers, no pumpkins, no carrots, and no watermelons. But in terms of success, I'm counting it as a win because I don't think we even planted watermelons.

As always, I do not perform SCIENCE at home, because home also contains Mr F and Mr Bunches, who are extremely hard on SCIENCE, or I imagine they would be because yesterday I also fixed our kitchen sink, which had a pipe that was leaking, and Mr Bunches at first helped me fix the kitchen sink by laying on my head before deciding he was going to work on his own pipes, and while I fixed the leak that existed I'm not entirely sure that there's not now three other leaks.

So I brought the

Poinsettia...

In A Can...

OF SCIENCE!!!?!!

to work with me today, where, heedless of the 10,000 things I need to do, I immediately sat down and read through all of the instructions on the can, instructions which referred me to the more detailed instructions hidden inside the lower lid of the can. So I took off the plastic bottom and retrieved the instructions, and also what I immediately hypothesized**

** actual SCIENCE term!

were seeds:





Then, because this is SCIENCE, I read all of the instructions on the sheet, even the one in box 1 at the bottom that reads "open the lid and read the instruction sheet," which also has a diagram showing one opening the lid. There is no diagram for reading the instruction sheet; you're on your own with that one.

The instructions first told me to pop the top and peel the lid back, and I immediately popped the wrong tab because why wouldn't there be two pull tabs on your

Poinsettia...

In A Can...

OF SCIENCE!!!?!!

I realized my mistake almost immediately and pulled the OTHER tab off and peeled the top back, so my

Poinsettia...

In A Can...

OF SCIENCE!!!?!!

Has an open top and a hole in the bottom, but what could possibly go wrong with that?

Then, I was instructed to get 3-4 ounces of water, which was problematic because (a) I am not entirely sure how much an ounce is; I think it's about a hectare, but I've never been able to keep those straight in my mind, and (b) this is a law office, where we do not have graduated cylinders**

** Actual SCIENCE term!

to measure out ounces and dekameters, so I had to improvise by using a glass from our kitchen.

I chose the one with the decorative forest scene:



And, as you can see, my Improvisation of SCIENCE also included measuring my hectare of water up against a handy reference, the handy reference being in this case a "Crayons Sports Drink" that one of my staffers bought for me to give to Mr Bunches because (and I quote) "You said he likes red crayons."

Crayons Sports Drink, as you can see, contains no high fructose corn syrup but does contain electrolytes.

I don't know what electrolytes are. My sole experience with them was the time that Charlie Brown's baseball team began drinking "a balanced electrolyte solution"



And then lost the game because they were all too full of electrolytes to play. Let that be a lesson to you.

Anyway, having measured out the appropriate acreage of water, I then had to pour it into what the directions assured me was "soil":



That's the "soil" after I watered it and sprinkled the seeds on it. For comparison's sake, I left one seed on the desk; you can see it as the tiny black speck in the lower left part of the picture.

The directions then said "Sunlight is not required for germination" which is how you know this is truly advanced science, in that about the only thing I remember from science class is that sunlight is what makes plants grow, because they convert it into energy.

But the

Poinsettia...

In A Can...

OF SCIENCE!!!?!!

does not require sunlight. Instead, I was told to "Keep [it] in a dark room or covered loosely with an inverted paper bag." There were no directions on how to obtain a paper bag or invert it, and I do not have the option of sealing off my office from all light and intrusion, much as I would like to do that, so I did the next best thing:

I put it in my desk:






That alone would not be nearly secure enough, though, and I can't find the wind-up chicken I ordinarily post as a guard for these things, so instead, I took other precautionary measures:





You'll note that the symbol is intended to be "Mr Yuck." If you are my generation, then you have an irrational fear of Mr Yuck, because

Mr Yuck is mean.
Mr Yuck is green!

And he denotes poison. And if you think that jingle isn't scary, see it in action:






With that done, I promptly threw out all the rest of SCIENCE, and then just as promptly remembered that I didn't recall the schedule by which poinsettias need to be exposed to the light in order to bloom by Christmas, so I pulled the directions back out of the garbage. They were none the worse for the wear:





I'll keep you updated on how this is going, and whether I decide to eat any of it.