Green Or Black?

Two choices in thumb color present a challenge every year and this year's challenge is just getting started. No matter how the season turns out, I look to the next season to try again. The last few months have been a learning time and it isn't over yet. My apartment faces north which means no direct sunlight, (but it can be bright on sunny days) and downright cold winters. The windows might have double-pane glass but they're set in met frames which means there are some terrific drafts.

By early winter I moved the small plants to a table in the living room where they wouldn't catch cold, (especially when their little roots were watered). The ceiling light isn't the best idea but it's better than nothing on those cloudy days where little light came from the windows. I'd say 90% of the winter days were overcast. The spider plant and devil's ivy were too big to put on the table with the others. That didn't leave me much choice but to keep them in the windows and hope they made it through the winter.  They not only survived, but thrived.

The spider plant produced three runners but keeping it on the window sill isn't exactly idea because those runners can't dangle naturally. Hopefully they can hang in there until I can get them settled into a bigger pot and set it on a barstool near the window. Have you ever seen pictures of large pots with spider plants in them, in a Victorian setting? The leaves seem to go every which way and the 'babies' like to 'hang around.' That's one of my goals this year, to see that plant get huge and have all her little ones clustered around her. Like the old woman who lived in a shoe with all those kids around.

Mom was something of a frustrated gardener. She spent years studying houseplants, reading up on everything she could find about specific ones, their care and feeding. Plant food was organic, fish emulsion, which was supposed to be good for plants. I don't know about that. I only knew when she fed them. The house smelled like fish on those days. (Even cooked fish smelled better.) She got plants that were supposed to be easy to care for. Iron plants were dubbed as being almost impossible to kill, but Mom found a way. Three of them.

She told me several times, "My thumbs are black. I read all I can about plant care and my plants die. You don't do anything besides water your plants and they thrive." I never told her I liked Miracle Grow plant food. She hated that stuff. I felt kind of bad for her and often thought she tried too hard to be successful. After she passed away I was able to keep her last two plants. One, a Z-Z plant, began growing like crazy when I switched it's menu to Miracle Grow, and so did her geranium. Unfortunately, the geranium died recently, as did my two geraniums. I think the apartment had a lot to do with it since it's quite different from the one we had for ten years.

Having gained some plant experience over the last few months, I'm ready to start again for this summer. I have to wait a month longer before doing anything but that's okay. The wait is worth it. To me, a house (or apartment) isn't a home without at least one plant around.