Winter Green

As much as I keep telling myself, "White is alright. There's nothing wrong with white. Winter is beautiful. It's good to look at a white landscape for awhile..."

I still can't help but feel deeply, deeply gratified by this...

Green.

Vibrant, growing, living green.

Even if it is only my house plant.

I'll take any green I can get at this point.

But my house plant does have a story behind it. A story that I actually take great inspiration from. But I won't tell you exactly how... I'll let you draw your own conslusions...

First of all, I purchased this house plant when Little Blue Eyes was a tiny baby. He and I were shopping together, and since I usually talked to him all the time while we were shopping, we 'discussed' which plant to buy, and decided upon this one. It really wasn't a big deal, other than that I really happened to like it (I'm kind of a picky house plant chooser), and also that the purchase was spurred on by my newly honed mothering urges to provide better indoor air quality for my child. (I'd read somewhere that house plants helped filter the air.)

In retrospect, I had also killed my fair share of house plants by the time I purchased this one, so I guess I have to say that this is the first house plant that I ever really committed my love and care to. Evidently my mothering instincts not only applied to my new baby, but this plant as well.

So, our house plant it was. And it went on to lead several uneventful years of house plant life. I cared for it -- watered it regularly (but not too much) and pruned it back from time to time -- and that was about all. It became a nice, bushy, flourishing house plant.

However, when the wheels started in motion for us to move back to Minnesota from Colorado, the living arrangements for the house plant changed drastically. Not so much because we were moving to a different time zone, but because it got shoved into a fully enclosed semi trailer and forgotten (in the summer heat) for about a month.

One day in July, in the midst of a long, slow period of unpacking, Mr. Blue Eyes found it and brought it up to the house for me. Poor house plant. It was very sad, weak, and almost dead. I can't believe it was alive at all, being deprived of both sunlight and water for over a month.

I actually felt a twinge of sadness. I was a little bit attached to the house plant. And I really am not one to be attached to plants. But you know, sometimes we all get a little sentimental...

Anyhow, we placed it on the step outside, in full sunshine and fresh air, and over the remaining summer months, nursed it back to health. It looked like the house plant was going to survive.

Then came our first frost, and the poor house plant had been left out on the step. When I brought it in, it was a mess. Totally shriveled up, dark green and limp. I didn't know what to do, and didn't have the heart to throw it out, so I just let it sit in the house for a few days. I told my mom about it, and she, a much more knowledgeable house plant grower than I, had no hope for the thing. But I still could not let it go, so after these few days, I began to pull away the dead, shriveled mound of leaves. I don't know why I even began doing that. It just seemed like the thing to do.

And then...

As I pulled away clumps of dead leaves and stems, and really expected to find nothing alive within, I came across... one... tiny... bright green...

Leaf.

It had been insulated just enough by all the other leaves that had shriveled all around it to survive.

I will tell you, I almost cried. I almost want to cry a little now.

About a house plant!

What can I say... I'm kind of an emotional being. But this house plant, to me, was a beautiful picture of God's love and refinement; of His presence in everything.

I really wasn't going to go into the story of the house plant today, but here we are, about a thousand words later, and the house plant story has been told. What I meant to do was show you picture of my other indoor plant projects, my little bit of green that have kept me going over the winter...

Rosemary. I purchased some sprigs of her last summer (I'm just going to assume she's a 'her'... it only makes sense) at a farmer's market, brought them home, clipped the ends, and stuck them in a couple little vases of water. My hope was to propagate them into a plant, and as you can see, I was successful. After awhile (maybe a month or so?) they had sprouted nice little roots in the water, and I transferred them to their pot.

Now these are downright ugly. Another one of my propagating experiments. These are Nikishi Dappled Willow sprigs, taken from this plant...

...which I planted last summer. Because I really like it, I was making plans to put more of them in this coming summer. But because they're not super cheap, I decided to cut off a few sprigs and try to propagate my own new plants. Just like with the rosemary, I put them in some little vases of water and waited for them to sprout some good roots, then transferred them to pots. But they're not looking so good. However, I have kept tending to them, hoping they are kind of dormant, like their mother plant outside, and will sprout some new buds this spring.

And last but not lease, my mystery petunia. At least I'm pretty sure it's a petunia. Last summer I planted some lavendar seeds and chamomile seeds in this pot. It took awhile, but something started growing. And once something started growing, it was very thin and delicate and took a really long time to become established. And over time, all but two sprouts withered away. And of the two sprouts, only one of them every really grew, which is the plant you see above. However, until about a week ago, this plant was about a three foot branched vine of leaves and pale pink petunia flowers.

(One would think that one should've taken picture of the flowers, but one did not. One was busy.)

It was sort of a happy little surprise. Still not sure how it ended up being a petunia... Either a seed was accidentally dropped in, or was already in the soil I used in the pot. Over the month of December it really bloomed and gave us lots of pale pink blossoms. But since the blossoms were about done and it was starting to get all unruly and gangly, I decided to lop it off. It will be fun to see if it blossoms again for the summer.

Woops! Almost forgot...

The lemon basil! (I guess the surprise petunia was neither least nor last.) I just threw a few of these seeds in a pot last fall, as my summer basil plant was cut off after becoming way to big and bushy. This plant, more than anything else, gives me the biggest sense of the fragrance of summer. Every once in awhile I just snap off a leaf and inhale deeply.

And it is divine.

Oh, is it ever divine.

So fresh. So lemony. So summery.

I think I'm going to go sniff some right now.

Comments

[Tauna]

I love your plant story. It is a beautiful plant and your moral is pretty impressive..
You are truly a nurterer.

I hope you find some relief from the whiteness. I am suffering from the same thing. I think our weather patterns are about the same.
You may be colder though.

I am ready to smell some dirt and see some green.

[Ninety-Nine Lives]

Aww, little house plant. I'm just like you in getting emotionally attached. To everything. And I tend to name things. Like my bamboo plant, Andrew Bamboo. He makes me happy in the wintertime. Honestly, I'd much rather have white outside then what I've got here in Chicago- gray. All gray. And mushy. About this time, I tend to feel a little claustrophobic, with all the buildings so close together and brooding. Ugh. Andrew Bamboo keeps me sane. Thanks for the post!

[Cate]

Hang in there girl. There is a definite nip in the air here today, which signals that autumn is not all that far away which means that spring isn't too far off for you :-)