Live plants are soothing — much more so than the dusty plastic ones some businesses use. To me, green is a healing, calming and soothing color. And real plants give us oxygen, while filtering impurities and floating toxins out of the air we breathe.

As we ate and sipped our drinks, I looked around and noticed all the usual house or office plants. I also spied a very fine specimen growing in a cool way you can duplicate in your own home.

They had grown a vigorous philodendron vine, with its roots in a jug of water, up and trained it across a wall. It framed a picture and the doorway to the gourmet kitchen.

One good way to grow plants like philodendrons, pothos and syngonium or taro vine is in water. You can put fishes inside to prevent mosquitoes and stagnation. An attractive large vase or jar works well for this.

All you need to do is refill or refresh the water and rinse and clean the leaves if they get dusty. A stout wire or recycled piece of suji fish line can be used to train the vine up the wall.