I am the original brown gardener – no, make that black-thumb.
It’s not that I don’t know anything about gardening. I actually, sort of, do. I just get distracted. It only took me a week to kill a lovely potted plant folks gave me before a special event. As we rushed around for the event that precipitated the gift, I did not have a passing thought about watering the flowers. By the end of the week it had shriveled up and died. Worse, it died so quickly that the givers saw the results of my neglect.
They bought me a silk potted plant.
One summer, in a weak moment, I purchased potted mums to enhance my porch. My husband and I both thought they looked lovely and wanted them to look bright and perky for expected guests. Unbeknownst to each other, we each watered the plants until they drowned.
Our current gardening brown thumbs are odd because, during our first 10 years of marriage we kept a rather large vegetable garden with rows of corn, beans and peas, a strawberry patch and even a prospering patch of asparagus plants. I canned more beans than I care to remember and enough pumpkins to last two or three years.
At least that is what we did most years. One year we went on vacation shortly after the young plants emerged from the ground. When we returned a couple weeks later, the weeds had taken over. We never did regain control of the garden – the weeds shaded the plants for the rest of that year.
Plants just need more time and attention than my sporadic, distracted care provides.
A few years ago I received a tough, low-light vine that I took to work to cheer up my work environment. For a couple of years I watched astounded as it thrived under my care – until I learned my co-workers occasionally took pity on the plant and watered or trimmed off its dead leaves.
Still, it did survive me. Such a wonderful plant for a brown thumb gardener like me: a Pothos “golden.” The thing grew and prospered until it became “root bound” and needed repotting. It did not die, it just looked pathetic, as if it were choking. I did not quite know how to repot it, nor did I take the time to figure out how to do it.
I eventually replaced it with a new Pothos and began with a really large pot so I would not have to repot it for a very long time. Then I began the odd habit of dumping my leftover weak tea into the planter. This plant has prospered and flourished. I guess it likes watered-down tea. New shoots and leaves curled over my desk shelf like a small forest. Few leaves died and new leaves continually appear and uncurl. Nearly a year and a half later and I have more plant than ever.
I began to think my thumb might not be quite so brown. After Christmas I picked up an Amaryllis bulb. These vigorous plants grow quickly and astonishingly. I love their brilliant colors.
I never had a chance to neglect it. My husband read the instructions and took over. By Valentine’s Day the bulb put out not one, but two shoots, each producing more than the usual three or four buds. I counted seven buds on the one stalk. That plant got us thinking maybe even brown thumbers had a chance in the plant world.
My husband bought six more plants to keep it company. Our dining room glowed with all that brilliant color – and my husband’s attention. Two weeks ago I noticed that one of the plants had withered up and died out of sheer embarrassment at living in the home of transitory brown/green thumb part-time gardeners. Last week, my husband touched another plant and its leaves crackled.
But we are not giving up. He bought a flat of flowering plants and began planting them in a specially prepared bed. He assures me they all will grow. I’m not holding my breath.
(The unfortunate gardener, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)