I was reading your post and this popped into my head.
On valentine's day I made a "bouquet" for my girl with some lower branches I removed because of bananaing. I just threw them in water like normal cut flowers and they still look great today (almost 2 weeks later). I'm only bringing this up because I am really impressed with cannabis' willingness to drink that tap water from a bottle. It won't root and it's not flourishing but it is still certainly standing up straight and using sunlight to keep its leaves taut.