Maybe It's Not So Brown

As, my family will be the first to tell you, I have a notoriously "Brown" thumb. If it grows, I can kill it. Not on purpose, mind you. I really like plants, and try to make them thrive. For example, in the house I sold this spring, there was a very pretty, bushy pink flowering plant. It was in the flower bed when I bought the house, and this plant was very invasive- I would find "starts" of it all over the garden. I owned the house almost 4 years. By the time I sold the house it was just a small bushy plant. As the years went by, parts of it died and I would have to pull them out. Another example. For Mother's day last year, Pete got me a dessert plant, and I almost killed it from lack of water. Now, how on earth can you under water a dessert plant made to withstand drought? I don't know, but I win that award. So, I have a house plant that was given to me years ago. Somehow it has survived my care. Obviously it is healthier some times than others, but it even flowers from time to time. Lately it has been looking very sad. I pulled almost half of it out of the pot last month, as it was looking droopy, unhealthy, and like the roots were not buried enough. HMMMM. Must have been from my re-potting attempt last summer. This weekend I found the problem. It was not anything I was doing, but my baby girl, Sadie, was rooting around in my plant and pulling the leaves. Not to eat, mind you, but she took a mouthful of soil and a leaf and spit them out on the living room rug. Imagine, I've been yelling at the boys for tracking dirt in on their shoes and leaving marks on that rug. Maybe I should appologise to them for that - but I'm sure they deserved yelling at for other things that I have not caught, so maybe not. So, into the kitchen went my plant, I pulled another quarter of the plant out and left the remaining good part. For now it sits on the counter, safe from marauding beasts.