I told myself I was going to the store to buy light bulbs. Somehow I left with three geraniums and a lavender plant, but no light bulbs. Oops.
That was a funny meme I came across online, and I have now found – because I’ve sought them out ever since – so many more that deal with the peculiarities, addictions and general obsessions so many people have about plants, flowers, gardening (including indoor gardens as well) and what a friend of mine calls “dirt therapy.” Most of them contain a good dose of self-deprecating humor, such as this one:
I was browsing for a new plant to spruce up the yard. Those three plants were the best six purchases I made that day.
Lo and behold, I was no sooner chuckling at these memes when they became self-fulfilling prophesies. I was a little bit amused at myself.
There I was at Liberty Park Greenhouse and Garden Center on June 30, the last day the facility was open for this season. I was looking for some plant propagation powder. Even though I was done buying any more flowers this year (or so I naively thought), what could it hurt to maybe look around a little for a minute or two? After all it was closing day, the last chance for such a flowery sensory overload until next spring.
Twenty minutes later, I came across a sweet little Rockapulco Rose Double Impatiens that I thought could look ever so nice in a little pot on the small table that sits between two chairs in the shady area of my deck.
And then I looked up and saw the sign that said “Buy One, Get TWO Free.” And the purchased plant itself was half off, at that.
How could I not? I mean, I would be helping three plants find a home, wouldn’t I? It would be unkind not to. Never mind that I didn’t exactly have a space for them on my elevated deck … details, details, details … I’d make it work, just like every other addicted backyard gardener on the planet would do.
Perhaps, you ask, why not plant them out in front of the house or elsewhere in the yard? Deer, that’s why.
The only things safe to be located in the urban wildlife highway that also serves as my yard are marigolds, salvia and a few other flowers that are not prime menu items at a deer’s buffet table. I do plant some geraniums out there, but I need to treat them with a noxious-smelling (to deer) spray throughout the season, plus amend the soil where they’re planted with a solution that is taken up by the roots that holds Bambi and friends at bay usually until late September or into October.
Which reminds me of another meme I found:
You’d think growing a garden would be relaxing, but then a bunny or deer starts eating your lettuce, and you now pace through the garden locked and loaded.
But I digress.
After my minute or two of browsing approached the one-hour mark, I found just the right geranium, sprouting a deep rose flower, a color missing from this year’s deck garden, so that one was chosen to come live at my house, too (though other geraniums were already in residence on the deck). Also selected was a blush pink Sun Patiens, which has now found a home next to my one-and-only tomato plant (a Sweet 100 cherry).
Everybody just got moved over a little to make room.
And since I was there, I also got a bag of on-sale potting soil, which I’ll save for next year, plus some plant food. Never did get the propagation powder.
I have turned into that cliché, the garden lady who thinks there’s no such thing as too many flowering plants, that there’s always room for at least one more and that self-control at the garden store is an appropriately disregarded virtue.
Or, as a friend told me (which she stole from someone else, she confessed) – you grow, girl!
It just feels so good. As some green-thumb sage put it:
I don’t know the secret to happiness … but I’ve never been sad bringing home a new plant.
Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by e-mail at upwindsailor@comcast.net.
