I over water plants way more than I should in this life and that's not always a really good thing.
My husband Mike and I share a common interest in gardening as well as growing plants inside our house. Between the sunroom and the east kitchen window there are 28 plants growing strong. Well, I have to be honest and say that 26 are doing just fine while the 2 African violets are looking like someone (that'd be me) tried to drown them. Not once but twice.
I had been noticing their sad and drooping state of appearance for a few days now and thought maybe that they just needed to be transplanted into another pot better suited for them. So I hauled them outside last evening and began the work of relocating them into another container. Just as soon as I placed my hands into the soil to loosen them up I felt the problem. Way too wet in there. Really wet. Sopping wet. Geesch, what had I been thinking?
Quickly I began the work of transplanting them and I'm sure that if they could have spoken in words understood to me that they would have relayed the message~
"For crying out loud lady! We just need a little drink now and then. NOT a quart of water every other day. Put us back in the window and leave us alone."
Now they are in new containers in soil that is much more appropriately not so wet. I can only wait to see if I caught my grievous error in time for the plants to recover and send forth their beautiful purple blossoms once again. I hope so. I come by my love of them naturally. My mom always had them sitting in our kitchen window back home on the farm at Haven, Kansas. She learned to love growing them by watching her mother-in-law, my Grandma Scott, grow them in her kitchen window as well. I've been trying my hand at keeping them for the last twenty years or so. I'm almost as good as they were at doing it :) Well, at least I used to be until I started watering them too much.
Plants and I have usually gotten along together quite well. There are many, many things that I cannot do that lots of women do regularly with no trouble whatsoever. They are able to sew clothing for their family with ease, crochet or knit beautiful sweaters and caps for little babies, stitch fine quilts, or make gourmet meals for their husbands every night. I'm not all that gifted with "home economics" kinds of stuff. But growing things? I was the fortunate recipient of that gene. Is my thumb "green"? I guess you could say that it is and with the exception of a few instances of overwatering, most of my plants have thrived and looked healthy in appearance.
When I first moved here to the Western Slopes in the summer of 2013, I had high hopes of making everything that I planted into the clay filled soil of this area grow and thrive. I put all kinds of stuff into the ground that Mike had helped me break up for planting. I planted three or four entire packages of Russian Mammoth sunflowers into the flowerbeds along the fence row, just adjacent to the alfalfa fields that are south of the house. I was so happy that day, positive that what ever went into the soil would sprout forth and look absolutely radiant when they bloomed later on in the summer.
A gazillion or so seeds planted resulted in less than a dozen plants at the end of the season. Disappointed, to say the very least. But I nurtured the few that made it and enjoyed what I could of them for the rest of the summer.
This year as late April approached on the calendar once again, I determined that I would give it another shot and plant about a gazillion MORE sunflower seeds into the earth at the very same spot that I tried last year. At first I thought I shouldn't even attempt it. Why set myself up to be disappointed once again when they probably wouldn't even sprout from the ground? But from inside of me I heard the voice of the 9-year old that still lives within and she said to please try one more time. For her. For fun. So I did and true to last year's record, only this time only worse, not a one made it. This time I was only disappointed momentarily and I gave up the notion that I could ever make a seed grow out here. I'd just buy seedlings from now on.
Yet last night as I was bemoaning the fact that I'd nearly killed my two African violets, I happened to look over at the flower bed to the south and it was there that I saw it. A Russian Mammoth sunflower was actually growing out there. I'd heard Mike mention earlier that one looked like it had made it but I hadn't even bothered to notice it. Not once in the entire past two or three weeks had I paid any attention to it. That is until last night.
A few of the plants out in the sunroom will be making their way to our first grade classroom at Olathe by next week. Not sure which ones will go but I want to take a nice variety of them for the kids to watch and take care of during the school year upcoming. We have a pretty nice set of windows facing the Uncompahgre Range to our west and I hope that the sunlight will be sufficient for their continued growth. I think it's important for children to understand how to take care of them. Plants are science and science is life. They may have never heard of a Christmas cactus or an airplane plant. Perhaps they have not yet had the chance to see a philodendron or a geranium. But they will this year. In the world of teaching, our task is to help children grow and what better way to help them understand that concept than to be mini-gardeners themselves?
It's the early morning here and darkness still surrounds the city of Montrose and our home just outside of town. Sally the dog has been up with me now since 4 a.m. and soon it will be time to tell her to go and wake up Mike. I love the early morning and the peace that it brings with it. The world will begin to awaken very soon and the peace will fade away with the noise of the start of the day. But for this moment in time in the last hour or so, I've enjoyed writing about life here. Some day when I am older and can no longer write these words down at least I can go back and read about the things that happened to me. I may not remember all of them but at least I will know that the experiences were mine to be blessed by.
Take care of yourselves everyone out there~
Enjoy this good day that we have all been given.
I remain alive and well along the Western Slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
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