Remember these words as you read this article – “When flowers BLOOM, so does HOPE” and “I TRIED; IT DIED.” These are but two of Gardening Sign Language.
Maggie’s Lack of a Green Thumb
It’s no secret that I was not born with a green thumb or even a greenish-yellow one. However, since moving back to my Alabama roots (no pun intended), I have made an honest, albeit pitiful, attempt to learn the art of not killing flowers. Since I do have a bent toward decorating, that seemed the logical place to start. Amid the joy of building and decorating an outdoor sitting area finding the right SIGNS, I thought, surely pointed the way. Thus began my trek in Gardening Sign Language.
When in Doubt, Follow the Crowd.
Within a very few months into my first Spring here in Dixie as a returning Alabamian, my brother and sister ensured that I learned the joys of shopping…every Walmart, Lowe’s and Super Foods gardening center. Was there time for checking out clothing, furniture and actual food? Oh, no, if it had no greenery in a pot or did not possess a posy on a stem, it held no interest for my family of avid gardeners. And, frankly, if it had either of those things, it held little interest for me. Thus went the first couple of years. When a whiff of springtime hit the air, the people of my fair town, my family and all adjoining towns, hit every gardening center with a passion seldom seen anywhere except in a love affair. I tagged along, mostly to have some place to go where my siblings would actually join me.
A Little Success Breeds Hope
By the second year, I gave a half-hearted attempt at growing a miniature orange tree, a banana tree and a host of philodendrons. The orange tree I figured would croak come winter, as would the banana tree, but the philodendrons, well, it pretty much takes a nuclear disaster to kill those. Thus my hopes, slim though they were, rested on the hearty phils’ survival. And then a miracle occurred ! The orange tree refused to die, although it sat in a corner of my fenced back yard, it’s leaves and branches bared to the wind. Not only the orange tree, but some hostas returned with the spring! Hostas I had planted – not my brother and not my sister, but little old brown-thumbed me. Ah ha! I became a raving gardener overnight!
Hope Springs Eternal
This year during our first early visit to Walmart’s garden center, two signs caught my attention. Perhaps it was because there was irony in their wordings as they sat side by side. The first, “Where flowers BLOOM, so does HOPE” and the second, “I TRIED, IT DIED.” I bought both, along with enough plants to fill a large bench and seeds to fill one, possibly two gardens and headed home.
I happily repotted plants, readied soil for seeds to become seedlings, fertilized and watered everything vaguely resembling greenery. This would be the year of the Maggie Gardener! With little thought as to how the plants might feel about my sign language, one sign found a home in the midst of several gently spreading Dianthus plants. The other found residence in a pot of Hens and Chicks (the plants; not the birds). And after we were completely, nearly, sort of, almost certain the frosts were past, the pottery containing assurances of my gardening prowess soon decorated the back porch and bare spaces in the gardens, along with new seedlings.
If Only Mother Nature Would Cooperate!
Ah, the seedlings were my proudest accomplishment, as they sprouted through the seed starter. The cucumbers proved the most eager reaching toward the warming light hanging over their bed. Surely within a week or so, we could plant the little darlings. And then the freeze came again. Blankets covered blueberry bushes and the young plants returned inside the house. Unfortunately, my brave little orange tree succumbed to the first frost, which sneaked in unannounced earlier in the overly warm winter.
Between freezes, the cucumbers doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size as, in the same container, tomatoes struggled to get through the cukes for some warming light of their own. The bell peppers, resting at the end of the same container, gave up and went back to sleep.
“These plants, these sweet green darlings will not die! I will garden them to the point of success, regardless of the fickle weather,” I swore, posing with my fist in the air, ala Scarlett O’Hara.
Again, the weather warmed with the promise of Spring. Again, the frost returned. However, I had the full assurances of my gardener brother that the last frost comes just before Easter. Easter came and went. My plants were now on roller skates, having been moved back and forth so often. I even made little skating skirts for those I insisted were female and nifty caps for the guys.
Has Spring Really Sprung?
With the passage of Easter, safety surely must now encircle my sweet flowers, grasses, bushes, and seedlings, so out they went for the last time. Except, for one sad little planter.
Hard Work Pays Off!
Within the circle of dead Dianthus plants – six dead Dianthus plants – sat one of my signs proclaiming, “I TRIED; IT DIED.” Hurling myself across the yard to the larger planter, so heavy I could not move it, I gasped when I saw… The tears fell, soaking the front of my shirt with a river of salty water as my eyes roamed all around the pot, taking in each small plant. With trembling fingers, I touched each of the mother plants and crooned over the sprouting ‘chicks’.
The sign in their center slanted to the side, but it’s words held true, as I gazed at the plants – “Where flowers BLOOM, so does HOPE.” Every little plant bursts with good health and babies that will one day drive me crazy as they spread outside any flower pot foolish enough to think itself capable of enclosing that large family.
So, it seems in the Gardening Sign Language, it matters not only whether you feed, water or speak sweetly to your plants, but also which signs you put in your garden. Could it possibly be that plants have evolved and now read the silly signs we place with abandon in their homes?