You Grow Girl™

Yesterday was so warm and nice. It made me giddy. It also (as signs of spring tend to do) made me think about plants. Specifically, I thought about my future container garden. The bitty boy wants carrots. I don't know if we can swing that. I want to plant sweet peas again this year because they grew high and pretty and last summer we made a little sitting corner surrounded by the plants. It was quite a feat considering the square, cement ugliness of our patio.

I think the big problem with our outdoor space is that it's quite huge without any visual interest or soil. Unless I suddenly find myself with unlimited funds, there's little chance that I'll have enough money to buy deep and varied enough containers to make a wonderful garden. Not to mention potting soil and plants and seeds. (And let's face it - should I ever find myself with unlimited funds, I'll probably move someplace with dirt I can call my own.) Last year's solution - which was basically not to attempt to convert the whole patio into a green haven, but to section off a more manageable corner and work with that - worked out much better than I expected and I think this year I'll expand on that idea.

My palm is dying.

I wanted to let you know so that if you should happen to come over and see my nearly dead palm, you wouldn't be stunned. But the fern, which I had nearly given up on, seems to be coming around. I'm so glad. My partner gave me the quizzical/suspicious eyebrows a few weeks ago when I painstakingly removed all of the little brown leaves from the base of the plant and trimmed back all of the dead stalks and soaked out what I suspect were salt deposits on the surface of the soil. His raised eyebrows seemed to say, "do you think that's really going to work?" or they could have been saying, "I hope you're going to pick all of those tiny brown leaves out of the kitchen drain, lady." At any rate, I raised my own eyebrows, clearly indicating, "hey buddy, say one word about the fern or the drain and I'll wrestle you to the not-very-clean linoleum."

He backed off immediately in deference to my obviously more intimidating eyebrow prowess. Either that or he just grabbed a coke out of the fridge and went back upstairs to play Mega Death and Violence 3000 some more. I'm not clear which it was because I was cooing to the fern again.

I do that - talk to the plants. Well, actually, I don't so much talk to the plants as beg them not to die. So far the fern has responded to this begging by putting out some new shoots and looking greener and happier. Ferns must be very susceptible to whining. Palms don't care. Thus, they die.

In other news, I don't have an avocado pit rotting in a glass. Instead, I have a pineapple top rotting there instead. I recommend this switch to anyone who's having trouble rooting an avocado. As an added bonus the process starts with making a kick-ass fruit salad. First get yourself a pineapple. Pick a decent looking one. Give a little tug on the green leaves (they're sharp, so be careful) and reject any pineapple that easily loses these leaves - this isn't like Charlotte's Web, there aren't any points for picking a runt. Check the part of the pineapple where the leaves join the fruit to see if there are any little nubby things. It's a good sign if there are. And finally peek into the heart of the leaves for new growth. If the pineapple passes these three tests you have a very good chance of getting it to root.

When you bring it home hack it up right away. Not only will your fruit salad be tastier, but the sooner you do the prep work, the better your chances of getting the thing to root. Slice off the leafy top and strip the vegetation around the core. Place it in a glass or jar of water. (Any leaves that are below the water line will rot. But you can haul the rooting plant out, strip some more leaves and change the water without doing any damage.) My pineapple top seems to be getting some roots, but they didn't appear for a couple of weeks. Be patient.

Gayla sent me a banana plant seed! Wasn't that nice of her? I haven't done anything with it yet, because I'm waiting until conditions are favourable (i.e., I'm waiting until the pineapple plant is in it's own pot, surrounded by dirt and doing well - I'm not taking any chances) to try it out. It sounds exciting though. And she sent me some nifty plant-related patches. They look like they could be Girl Guide patches. Or maybe just another organization that has a patch fetish. I don't recognize the patch even though I was once a Girl Guide. I found out, one night when we had a special presentation on teenage girl hygiene, that the only colour of nail polish appropriate for toenails is bright red. One of our leaders told us that. She had seen some other colours on some toes at the beach and was highly offended. Her nostrils flared in indignation just thinking about it. We all promised that should we choose to paint out toenails, we would do the sensible thing and paint them red.

But behind her back we all raised our eyebrows to each other clearly saying, "agree with whatever she says, because this is one crazy lady."