My dad, used to come to my house and say, “Ahhh, Chris, don’t you think you want to water this plant?” and I’d say, “Is that what’s wrong with it?”
My Dad had a great green thumb, I don’t know anything that he couldn’t grow and he enjoyed the entire process. Planting, caring for and harvesting. I can tell you, with certainty, that I DID NOT inherit my Dad’s green thumb. Maybe that’s why the 4, count them, 4 semi-living plants I have in my home are so important to me. They’re like old friends now and it’s a miracle that they’re still alive. Two of them even survived the move from Susanville, California to St. George, Utah. I’m sure that all along the way they kept saying, “it’s only a little farther, just hang on, we’ll be there soon and find a place in the sun and, hopefully, some water.”
It’s not that I don’t try; I just seem to be jinxed. I remember when my niece, Taletha, was getting married. We were having a garden wedding in our yard with a reception to follow. Wellllll, what could I do but plant the 200 feet of border on 2 sides of our yard with beautiful flowers and bedding plants? Right? I want you to know that after having dug, weeded, (removed buried nuts that the squirrels so generously left as their winter crop – who in the heck was leaving nuts for those pesky squirrels?), I proceeded to invest $500.00 in bedding plants and flowers and even spent DAYS getting them in the ground. My beds were beautiful and looked lovely for the wedding. I was even more excited about how my beds would look the next spring when the plants matured a little more.
Now, I do know that many plants (perennials) will winter over and come back the next year. About mid-March, Fred started asking me when I was going to start preparing my flower beds. Understand, in Susanville, winter can last clear till May or June. I wasn’t in any hurry; I was waiting and watching the weather. Well, one day Fred came in, so proud of himself, wanting to show me what he’d done for me. Can you guess what it was? He CLEANED OUT my flower beds. He’d WEEDED out every plant that I’d planted the summer before. Needless to say, my beds never got re-planted. Of course, my Dad, laughed himself silly.
After living in St. George for 9 years, Fred decided to plant the BIG concrete box in our front yard, (only because we had a new Grandbaby and it had to be wonderful for Britan and Mom). If you come by the house, you’ll see a WHOLE LOT of green. Is that like lying out in the sun till you have enough freckles that it looks like you have a tan? Mmmmmm, maybe not. The green’s gotta go, but, if I let Fred do it, I stand the chance of loosing all my plants in the process. What a dilemma.
Well, for those of you with green thumbs, you’re my heroes; for those of you that are green thumb challenged, like moi, welcome to the barren wastelands. You know, we could be like Fred’s dad who planted one singe stem of daisies in a row in his front yard and watered them daily. The only problem was, they were plastic. When we asked him why he was watering the plastic flowers, he said, “I have to wash off the dirt.” Makes sense. I don’t think I’ve gotten there yet, but if you start finding plastic flowers in my flower beds, you’ll know that I’ve finally given up and that my Dad will REALLY be laughing his head of in heaven.
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