Plant Slayer by Paty Jager

I love plants. I love the varied and vibrant greens, the many colors of the blossoms, and the different shapes of the petals. And the scents. Some are heavenly and some not so much.

My house would be filled with plants if I could keep them alive.

Growing up my mom and grandma had gorgeous flower beds, huge gardens with tasty vegetables, and house plants that took over. I wanted to have all that wonderful plant life around me. But I’m lucky if a plant lives for six months to a year! 

I love plants but I have a tendency to forget they need to be watered. They aren’t like kids or animals who make noise when they're thirsty. Someone should invent a water alarm that you can set for the type of flower and when the soil is too dry it makes a beeping noise. Then, I would respond and water the plants as they need it.

Even when I’m trying to be good about watering plants, I lose them because I overwater. Yes, the above gadget would be perfect for me and my poor plants. I do have a Norfolk pine that I’ve had since my oldest daughter’s bridal shower. We gave six-inch Norfolk Pines as gifts at her party and I kept one. It is now about four feet tall and over 20 years old. But it has been a fighter. There were a few times when I thought I would lose it. Either from lack of water or the wrong spot of the light it needs. It is my longest-living plant.

My second longest-living plant is a cactus that traveled from Montana in a piece of farm equipment. Hubby hauled a baler from Montana. I was standing beside the piece of haying equipment admiring it for his benefit and glanced down. In a small pocked of dirt, in a turned-up piece of metal, sat what looked like a small piece of cactus. I dug it out with a spoon and put it in a pot. After a few years it was large enough to plant outdoors. This is what it looks like now. 

A friend gave me a start from one of her house plants when we moved into the house we live in now. That was ten years ago. It’s alive but it has had several reincarnations during that time and it is just now acting like it might be blooming.

I love peonies. I have 5 of them that I split off from one that had grown in the yard where I grew up. It is probably a heritage peony because I know it was in the yard when I was young. It may have been there when we moved into the house when I was 2. That is over 60 years ago.

I have been trying to grow a wild rose that my daughter kindly gave me a start from hers. It has yet to bloom and it keeps getting yellow leaves. Hubby says it’s because it’s dry but I water it every day and when I checked the moisture in the soil, it was wet. Sigh!

My garden this year consists of a great crop of leaf lettuce, one tomato plant, and something either squash or cantaloupe, I’m not sure which because something keeps eating the vegetable that comes on. It never gets more than about marble size before it’s eaten. So I have yet to determine what is growing. I didn’t plant it. At least not this year.  I had 5 spinach plants come up. One pea plant and it was eaten.

My petunias are doing so-so. The poppy seed my daughter gave me from her plants and I sprinkled in my planters did great! I’m saving the seeds off of it and plan to sprinkle them around my peony plants to see if they will grow there next spring.

The plant my daughter gave me last year for Mother’s Day is doing well in my bedroom window.  I do need to take the dead brown leaves off of it. It didn’t get watered when I was gone during the hot weather and some of the leaves died. But the plant continued to bloom and grow. It’s a keeper!

Now those are all the plants that I kept alive. I'm not mentioning the empty pots in the garage or the ones that don't look like they will make it through fall let alone the winter. 

How about you? Can you keep plants alive? What is your favorite plant?

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of murder mystery, western romance, and action-adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters.

Website: https://www.patyjager.net

Blog: https://writingintothesunset.net/
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2IhmWcm