Susan's Scribblings the Blog

A couple of my plants have died. Granted, they were grocery store cheap African violets, but I do miss their comforting colors and lively presence on the windowsill. There are still four left, along with a temperamental cactus and a megalomaniacal philodendron.

I managed to save one violet which had become rotted somehow and detached from the rest of its base roots: it’s sitting in a cup of water with a dozen blooms on it as we speak. I fear putting it in soil will kill it.

Another plant did the same thing, and I have it floating in a shallow dish of water because it can’t get nourishment anywhere else because it had no root base at all. It, too, had blooms on it, so it’s in the plant ICU right now.

Some people have a knack for killing plants, and others have plants they can’t hold back from reproducing like rabbits. I have a plant which has produced some 30 offspring, all of which have their own pots and, should they attain self-awareness, will hoist little picket signs and demand a better view than the next door neighbor’s wall.

A couple of plants at home are old and have faithfully kept growing for decades, while the ones today seem to have shorter life spans. I’m thinking it’s high cholesterol or obesity; they certainly are killing us humans already.

The violets get plant food regularly, which is really chemicals mixed with water, sort of like those vitamin water concoctions which are so popular on the shelves at Wawa. Do you think there is a connection here?

The remains of dead plants go into the backyard garden, where the soil can benefit the other flora. That would be what happens to us if we were put into the ground without elaborate, expensive and impermeable caskets. To the soil we return, only to come back again. Hopefully not as a grocery store cheap African violet.