Autumn!
Leaves!
Red maple and red oak. We’re seeing a lot of red, but I saw some poplars the other day that were starting to show off their yellow. The reds are my favorite, though, especially when you see that one tree that seems almost neon red, popping decisively from the autumn wash of landscape.
Anyway, I’m trying a thing.
In the history of seeds I’ve sprouted, there was once an orange. I think it lasted a week before I finally fried it out in the sun. That was 2009. I’ve learned a thing or two since. Primarily things about patience with tiny delicate organisms.
I am constantly on the lookout for seeds. If I eat a thing that has seeds, I will try to save the seeds and sprout them. I’ve sprouted probably hundreds of apple seeds. And now, hopefully, a batch of orange seeds from a really seedy orange I knew once...
I’m not good at plant care. Like, at all. There’s a friend of mine who’s awesome at it, and she had the incredible misfortune of hiring me to mind her house while she vacationed with family this summer. She didn’t leave long enough for me to do permanent damage, but there were all kinds of things in her instructions that I was pretty sure I would have figured out eventually.
I enjoy caring for plants, though, because I always find little messages from God.
Mint, for example, a tenacious little plant, can be encouraged to root if you mash a sprig of it into the dirt. And cutting it off at the top, the main bent of its growth, forces it to branch out. So, if you find yourself facedown in the dirt, or if you are suddenly stopped - look for the other ways you can grow.
My strawberry plant returned this year with a vengeance. It had rooted its runners into every other pot before I even noticed. Not every runner found a spot to root, but most did. Lesson learned: rabid enthusiasm breeds success.
I cared for my own first tomato plant this summer. (Yes, I somehow got to be this old without ever having my own tomato plant.) I found out that tomatoes need a TON OF WATER. In fact, I kept having little hard green tomatoes that refused to ripen until I began dousing the thing with water. Just another notion of fairness not being equalness, but being “everyone gets what he or she needs.”
And, despite having just the tomato and the pepper plant - I lost some veggies just because I didn’t pick them when they were ripe. If a thing is ripe, PICK the darn thing. Don’t sit around waiting for bugs to eat it. Cause they will.
Anyway, enough of these botanical anecdotes. With any luck, I’ll have the patience to properly care for some orange seedlings, once they (hopefully) start to sprout...
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botany! I like this post.
ReplyDelete@Michael - well thankya thankya fer readin' it ^^
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