Hello, Your Garden Is Calling – Botanicalls

This morning, on Yahoo, one of the featured videos caught my eye.   ABC News did a piece on a group of quirky young NYU students how have devised a way for your plants to CALL you on your PHONE when they need something.   The technology has been dubbed Botanicalls.  Not enough water and the plant calls to complain. Too much water and the plant calls to complain. Not enough sun and the plant calls to complain. Does like what you made for dinner and the plant calls to complain… no, wait. That’s my kids that do that. Yeesh… Close enough though. It is like adopting another kid or something.

Of course, on the other side, when you do something right for your plant, it will call you for that too. So, your plant could be calling like 20-30 times a day, if you are attentive enough or not attentive enough. Add it a jealous streak and I think you have a being that is on par with some of my ex-boyfriends in terms of annoyance and intelligence levels.

But all kidding aside, this is a bit odd. Brilliant but odd. And you know what is more unusual? This team used the Internet to make this technology possible. PHP and open source technology were major components. So great… Now the internet not only knows about that smutty, little site you like to visit, but it can now know if you are prone to killing your plants.   There is no privacy any more, ladies and gentlemen.

In fact, the technology is so easy to use and recreate, that these guys (well, mostly gals actually) are not even going to be packaging these puppies up and reselling them on late night television for only $19.95. Instead, they are going to give the whole thing away. The team is planning on releasing a DIY kit here shortly. If you are interested, you can sign up for an email that will let you know when the kit is available.

I don’t know if I will be putting this together or not. Knowing my luck, the plants would probably just call to gossip about what the hollyhocks did last night, who is pollinating with who and who they would like to be pollinating next. Really, folks, that is way too much information about my plants’ personal lives.