Monday, June 15, 2009

Grammy's Botanical Garden

OK, so I write once a week now! It's summer, I have houses to rehab and clean, shopping to do, P's activities once a week, books to try to read, and the list goes on and on.

Things are getting pretty out early summer---I'm still weeding and stuff is starting to bloom. Between you and me though, I have the blackest thumb there is and can keep very little alive. Vines are about the only thing that I water that stays alive (possibly because they need little water!!) But I am having a run on other colorful botanicals this summer.

First a few years ago, I was salivating for a mimosa tree and a friend from work came back from a Michigan vacation and gave me stick (that's about what it looked like). Actually, backing up the year before, she came back with some seed pods which I planted with no success. So here she comes with this stick, actually two sticks that she said were the beginnings of mimosa trees--my favorite.

Well, we had been saving the ashes of our dear, departed collie (sitting in a box in the front closet since 2000) to bury under something special, so I took a mimosa "stick" and the box of ashes and went and planted it on the side of the house where it is to this day...just a stick sticking out of the ground.

The second stick I planted on the side of the driveway and lo and behold,



It has yet to bloom those beautiful, fuzzy pink flowers but it is sure growing by leaps and bounds. Guess the soil there was a bit richer than dead collie ashes.

So the next project that just landed in my lap was cactus growing. It all started with a margarita a year ago.



I thought, this glass would be perfect to grow a cactus in---Senorita Cha-Cha is her name. She has a partner Senor Bob but as I was getting on a plane shortly after lunch, I figured one of these was all I needed at that time. But Fantastic Son was tasked to come again for dinner and procure my Cha-Cha's buddy.

So Cha-Cha waited until Bob could join her which he did this spring when we again journeyed out to the cactus state. I also bought a package of giant saguero seeds to plant in the palm/cactus soil (another search for far and wide---you just can't plant cactus in our run of the mill Missouri potting soil). So I had a matching set of "planters", cactus seeds, special soil and after putting it all together, it started raining and raining and raining until the cups fillled up and overflowed with water along with my giant saguero seeds.

But alas, while shopping at Lowe's last week, I ran across these



Which is what I wanted to do in the first place but couldn't find cactus at the time. And you see they are living inside currently in the window where they get ample sun when it's not raining---



So when the midwest drought starts up one of these days, they'll be moved outside where I'm sure they'll flourish as long as I can keep them alive until then.

Ok, so that's not such a colorful blog...more to come...

Grammy's tired today.

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