Just Sitting Here Drinking a Juice Box

I just opened the fridge and thought, with the day I've had, I could really use some Motts for Tots.

Nothin' like a nice, cool, Fruit Punch Motts for Tots juice box to wash your worries away.

I was going to begin the day's post with this:

Someone or someone-times-two got a hold of chalk and made my coffee table a chalkboard.

Nice.

Not a big deal.

Except for the scratches. Sweet.

Hang on. I'm gettin to the bottom of my juice box and the straw won't get it all and I'm having to slurp. This could take a second.

Boy there really isn't a lot of juice in this thing.

Anyhoo. I tried to take a picture of the chalk but my camera battery was dead. So I left the chalk sitting there on the table until the battery charged nice and good and I could take a picture of it.

Somewhere in between the chalk and now, I dropped my son off at school and went to Home Depot to procure some fall gardening supplies. I'm batting about a 50-50 in sustaining plant life now, I guess now is as good a time as ever to bring that up.

I'm known as the Grim Reaper of plants.

My husband says the plants in the garden sections cower when I walk in.

He calls my hanging baskets, "hanging CASKETS".

I guess he wonders why I kill them and keep buying them, because I am a gardening failure. I guess each time I get more plants, it is with a renewed hope and faith within myself that I will turn my inner gardener around.

But he's probably right. Either I should hire a gardener (after we hit Power Ball) or just buy some pretty stones.

Because I'm real good at buying plants and planting plants and watering them. For about the first week. Then I walk by them and think "uh oh, I really should water that guy, he's looking a little sad." And then I don't. And eventually my son brings it up. "Mommy, why is he sad?" And then I feel bad. So today, one of my projects was to nurse two hanging plants back to life by repotting them. The two very same that are flowery and leafy in this picture right here.

Unfortunately they do not look like that anymore.

In fact, looking at how beautiful they once were made me feel like a big giant jerk just now.

Hang on. Finishing the juice box. May have to crack open another.

Well, the soil on my poor plants was all old anyway because even when I'd try to water it, the water would go straight through the pot and right out, so what I really needed to do was repot them. And this is a pretty big deal. Normally they'd die before I get a chance to repot them. So we're getting somewhere.

See? I'm working on it.

But as I'm wandering out of Home Depot with Mini, I get to the car and the car won't start.

And as luck would have it, I forgot to plug in my cell phone last night and there was barely a charge.

Batting 0 in the battery department today.

I eeked out a call to AAA and the fine gentleman was there to rescue me within 15 minutes and my husband was quick to respond as well. Oh it's nice being a damsel in distress once in a while! Husband and AAA guy to the rescue!!

The AAA guy put in a new battery and I was on my way. I put my phone on my charger and now it's fulla juice. Kinda like me, come to think of it. And my camera is charged. Gosh life stinks when nothing's charged.

Piece of advice: if phone is not charged, don't forget car charger. However, car charger won't work if battery is dead anyway, so just make sure phone is charged.

Mini and I gardened for the rest of the morning, nursing my plants back to life and putting up some belatedly fall decorations and remulching. When my other son got home, we finished up the gardening and by we I mean me, in between chasing them back to our yard from our neighbors or from the street or breaking up fights over who gets to ride the tricycle or use the bubble mower or wear the helmet. They probably both should be wearing helmets at all times, who are we kidding.

Ps. Is it bad for kids to dig into Miracle Grow potting soil? Don't answer that.

So now I'm sitting here drinking a juice box and the kids are in bed after taking long hot baths because we were all hot messes from the dirt and fertilizer.

Off for more juice now, and a shower. Good day.

* * *

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Just Sitting Here Drinking a Juice Box

https://babytealeaves.blogspot.com/2009/10/just-sitting-here-drinking-juice-box.html

Plant E.R.

It was touch and go this afternoon.

Last weekend I added three plants to my new patio. One more hanging basket and two potted plants. They're really pretty and flowery and lovely.

Last night, I passed by the new hangy one and the flowers were so big and beautiful that I actually would've described the plant as "meaty". It was full of meaty leaves.

This morning, all the meaty leaves were sad. Not meaty.

What happened between last night and this morning, you ask? I'll tell you what happened. I moved it two feet yesterday and the sun dried it out in two seconds. You see how quickly this happens? If you're not watching, your brown thumb comes out and your plants die. But don't worry, I watered them and two hours later, the flowers perked up like they were thanking me. It was almost odd, come to think of it. Almost like they're alive or something...

Then, one of my hanging baskets took a turn for the worse. It was literally like "Plant E.R." going on at my house.

I had put the plant in the basket with the soil it came in (fyi: big mistake. big.), and every time I would water it, the water would go straight out of the basket and after a while of this happening, it occurred to me that maybe it wasn't getting watered.

I acknowledged this out loud, saying something about the poor plant looking sad, and of course Poops, who was playing "gardener" with me, heard me.

And he looked at me sincerely, with big eyes and asked, "Who made him sad, Mommy?"

Aye-aye-aye.

Yes. Of course it was me. I admitted it to him too. I told him. "Mommy did honey, but I am going to fix it, I promise." And I climbed that ladder, took the plant down, added some food and some new potting soil, and within hours, the hanging basket? Still a basket. Not a casket.

I'm proud.

Lives are being saved here.

Tragedies averted.

I'm getting good at this.

My brown thumb is getting a shade (or two) lighter.

I may have a future in gardening.

(OK maybe not.) But at least my plants have a future, right?

For now, anyway.

In the meantime, I'm thinking I might need this:

A water globe. Just in case. It waters things for you.

It's like plant water insurance.

For people who have a problem watering their plants. Like me.

It's like a plant respirator if you think about it. It kind of keeps the plant alive for you. Hmm. Except then you have to remember to fill the globe, right? So really it's kind of the same thing.

It does look kind of cool though. And from way up high, no one would see it really. You know, in the hangy plant thing. I'm spending too much time thinking about the water globe. Maybe I could just adopt the motto: "In the time it takes for you to complain about your dead plants, you could have just watered them." So I'm just going to save myself 10 bucks and water them myself. You know, and be a role model. Cause really, it's about the kids.

Plant E.R.

https://babytealeaves.blogspot.com/2009/04/plant-er.html

Hanging Caskets

My husband thinks it's just sooo funny. I can whip up a dish and make a yummy meal, I can take care of two kids, multi-task, I have a college degree, a professional background...

But I can't keep a plant alive. Examples of this are here:

And here:



Poor plants. And yes. It's all my fault. They die of neglect. Most days I will pass them and think, "Boy, I really should water that." And the next day when things are looking grim I think, "Oh boy, he really should get watered!"

And then when things are looking really destitute, I do the "rush to revive". I finally water. Profusely. And pray a little. But by then, in most cases, it's too late. I did it again. And it's sad. I even do this with plants that actually require little no watering at all. Like bamboo plants.

My husband says that when I get the itch to garden, which is oh, about once a year and usually around this time of year, and I walk into a garden center, the plants cower in fear like I am the gardening version of the Grim Reaper. And the ones I have chosen are sure to meet their death.

Nice.

So the other day, when I got the itch to garden, I was especially excited because I found some beautiful hanging baskets with these gorgeous, lush, red, overflowing impatiens. And I can never find really pretty red impatiens when I am actually looking for them. Red impatiens are some of my favorite flowers because they are so colorful and pretty, yet they exist and even thrive in the shade, which happens to claim most of my front yard.


And this time, I bought the impatiens along in their boring white plastic hanging baskets...

But I ALSO decided to get some wrought iron baskets with the liner that's supposed to be good for the plants' roots...

I even bought fertilizer!

And used it!!

The kids even helped...

Because of course I want to teach them about caring for things...

Don't they look pretty???

So maybe there should be a bet going here so that I can be held accountable for my plantlife. How long can I keep my hanging baskets? A couple weeks? A couple months? Anyone on the over/under? And when/if they die, how long will it actually take for me to take the hanging baskets/slash/dead plants down? Because that's a whole 'nother issue entirely...

We'll see. Because I have slowly chiseled away any faith anyone has had in me and my ability to keep plants alive. When I excitedly brought my new flowers home, with their new hanging basket-homes, and started describing my newest project/acquisition to my husband by saying, "I got these beautiful red impatiens and I even got them real hanging baskets!" He responded by saying, "Aren't you pronouncing it wrong? By baskets, do you mean 'caskets'?

Nice. Well anyway, there they are. My pretty red flowers in their hanging caskets.

Hanging Caskets

https://babytealeaves.blogspot.com/2009/03/hanging-caskets.html