May 23, 2012

• Green Thiefery

  I have documented here before that although I go by the name Turningreen and promote healthy green living, complete with farm fresh organic produce…..I do not possess green thumbs. Not even one.

  Last year, at the end of the school year, I was given a living plant that had beautiful red flowers on it. It was to thank me for my time volunteering to teach the kids about the environment. It was a thoughtful and appropriate gift, but unbeknownst to the gifters – doomed from the start.

  I kept it in our sunroom and watched it’s pretty flowers flourish and then whither away and die. (It was some kind of lily, but for the life of me I cannot remember the specific type.) My mom came to the rescue and suggested I move the plant outside so it would have a chance of catching some rain water on occasion. (I’m not known for remembering to water plants. It’s much easier to remember to water things that whine, like children.) The plant was placed on the deck, where it was exposed to the elements of the summer, fall, and winter. At some point it became just a pot of dried up soil, with no plant evident.

  Until last month – when it was back, baby! I paid it so little attention that it was as if the plant sprouted in its entirety overnight. It was green and leafy and looked to be healthy, despite my complete and total lack of attention.

  I was so proud that I transplanted it into a more permanent pot and placed it prominently in the front yard, right in the middle of the very large, very barren flower bed in which I was procrastinating planting anything.  I figured the plant would soon have pretty red flowers to distract from the large mulchy barren space around it.

  But, no. The large population of Bubble bunnies decided to have it for lunch instead. When I got back from a weekend at the beach — this is what I found:

  

  Couldn’t the rabbits have just eaten it as it was growing in the disposable pot out back? Why did they have to wait until just after I had decided to take credit for the life of this plant? And why did they eat my single potted plant, but not the line of plants of the exact same variety in my neighbor’s flower bed?

  Just as I was getting over this bunny attack, something amazing started to happen. The one perennial that I planted in this large barren bed, a variety of lantana that attracts beautiful butterflies, began to come back! I could not believe my eyes! The previous year, they did not come back, so I had to buy new ones. This time, there were three of them, and they were all growing with healthy green leaves and I began to think that I did in fact have a little bit of the green thumb going.

  Fast forward to this past Monday. It had rained, and the flower bed was quite muddy. The kids and I were on our way out to swim practice, when I found our 10 year old daughter standing in the mud, kicking mulch around her. As I complained about her stepping in the flower bed and getting muddy, she pointed out that the plants were gone. Not nibbled, not damaged, but GONE.

  “What?!? Did the bunnies dig up the roots and everything?”

  Our daughter giggled. I did not find it funny and was all sorts of grumpy.

  The next morning, I ranted and raved about it to the Mr. “And wouldn’t you know those damned bunnies dug the plants out by their roots and completely took them away?” To which he responded, “No, I did it.”

  

  “Are you KIDDING me?!?!? Where are they? Can you get them back?”

  He was “weeding” the flower bed and pulled up my lantana. He went into the garage, and produced the three plants that he had uprooted.

  You should have seen the tangle of roots on those suckers.

  “You pulled up something with that kind of root system and didn’t stop to think it might be a plant?”

  He said he did not. And then he laughed and put them on top of the flower bed.

  Later that morning, I managed to replant two of the three lantana. One still has leaves and one does not.

  I do not think they will grow. I essentially dug a wide(ish) hole and jammed the roots in without too much finesse. So maybe I don’t have that green thumb, after all. But even if I did — would it protect me in the fight against the garden thieves….both four- and two-legged?!?!? I think not, dear readers….I think not.

   

   

  • 1:39 pm
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