Re: Eccentric flower lady

PJ wrote:
Everyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about my flowers. Yes, I talk to them, or rather I breathe on them because I once read that it gives them an extra jolt of carbon dioxide. I'm rewarded for my somewhat (okay, weird) efforts by flowers that flourish and bloom prolifically right up until fall when I have to rip them out by their roots and sob uncontrollably as I dispose of them in the compost pile. I'm almost sobbing now just thinking about it.

Really? Fall? I have to rip my plants up in December, when the moon flower vines interfere with the hanging of the Christmas lights.

You know moon flowers? Most specifically, Ipomoea alba. Here -- I've found a Michigan reference for you --->http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/893/

Fun plant. Grows like a Jack in the Beanstalk vine. Flowers as big as a dinner plate. Opens at dusk. Intoxicating scent. And, the coolest thing -- you can watch 'em open. Unfurls in about 30 seconds. Children love watching that.



Anyway, I hate it when any of them don't survive. It kills me.


It doesn't kill me. If they were doing what a plant is supposed to do, they wouldn't die. I no longer want wimpy plants. Some of your impatiens *did* survive, right? Those are the impatiens you want. Survivors. Tough-ass impatiens. Death to the wimpy whimpering ones.

In fact, go out and watch them as they die and laugh at them. The other plants will notice and get with the program.


I feel
like I failed them and I am plagued with guilt.


Yeah, well, screw that. Kick their corpses across the front yard. Encourage Chatty Baby to quit acting like a bird and come and kick the dead plants.


A week or so ago when a
late frost gripped Chickpea in its cruel mitts, I lost some of my impatiens and I was crushed.


Would you please man up, girl.


This is going somewhere, stay with me.


I'm taking you on faith here.


I've learned through my years of gardening that weeds have the ability to mimic certain plants. In essence, they fool me into thinking they're a perennial rather than a weed.


If the weeds come back every year, they are, by definition, a perennial.


This happened last year. I noticed a
perennial that I didn't remember planting, so I figured I just didn't remember planting it. I watered it and petted it and breathed on it, and fed it Miracle-Gro Bloom Booster, but it never bloomed.


You don't wanna give the Miracle Gro to the perennials. While you do not care if a zinnia or a marigold blooms them self to death, you're interested in the overall health of your perennials. Check out fish emulsion or liquid kelp.

Also, keep the Miracle Gro away from the tomatoes unless you want flavorless. Fish emulsions, baby. A lovely slurry made from fish guts and bones. Plants love it. Stinks to high heaven. Your yard will smell like you've sprayed fish guts on it, and your neighbors will complain, but screw them, you were here first.


It just kept
getting bigger and branchier, mimicking its neighbor the red flowered perennial and undoubtedly laughing with its fellow weeds saying, "What a clueless chump! And she calls herself a gardener!" Finally I realized I had been deceived and I ripped it out, scolded it profusely, and threw it in the trash. Fucking cocky weeds.


Did it bloom? Was the bloom pleasing? I'm nurturing three different weeds with pretty blooms. You're such a snob. It blooms, it's pretty, it lives, it thrives, it reaches over and kicks the ass of the wimpy plants, but, nooooooo, not good enough for you. It has no pedigree, so you compost it. I hope you're cold composting, not hot composting, so that the weed seeds spread through the compost and it comes back and back and back until it climbs through your window and pulls your hair and uses your good perfume while you sleep.

It's people like you who turn their nose up at a Stella Dora or Optimara because they're common.




I think the same thing is happening this year but I'm not sure. I'm waiting for one of the perennials to bloom and fear it may be a cousin of the weed I murdered last year.

It's had one year to toughen up. To be told familial tales of wretched snob women who killed its mama.


Maybe it has appeared out of revenge.


It might eat your dog.


Maybe it's a human-eating weed. Maybe when I lean down to breathe on it, it will emit toxic fumes that immediately asphyxiate me, or blind me, or cause paralysis or baldness.


Or enlarged pores. Or facial hair. Unibrows. Nail funguses.

Maybe I'd better go back to bed.


Might wanna check under your bed. You gotta bedroom windows?

Donna
.

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