I was at home the other day, minding my own business, like I’m always doing, when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. I got the phone to work,” said Butterfly.
This was cause for celebration, because she meant she got her cell phone to work. The cell phone that she carries around, turned off and usually uncharged, in her purse, for no good reason. I got her the cell phone a long, long time ago, thinking, like all good children think, that my elderly parent who flits all over the place by herself should have one in case of an emergency.
Teaching said elderly parent to use said cell phone has mostly been an exercise in futility. I even produced a set of instructions for her written in “Butterfly-ese” and color-coded. We have practiced. Nothing seems to work.
One day she returned to her little truck in the Target parking lot and it wouldn’t start. I would call this a bonafide emergency, wouldn’t you? I would, in this instance, use my cell phone to call a tow truck, or perhaps the loving daughter who had given me the cell phone. What did Butterfly do?
“Hey, kid!” she said to some passing stranger (and she calls everyone “kid”), “do you have a phone? My truck won’t start!”
She flagged down a total stranger and borrowed his phone to call a tow truck. I guess, in Butterfly’s book, a broken down truck doesn’t qualify as an emergency. At least it’s not enough of an emergency to figure out how to turn on and use your own cell phone. It’s much easier to use someone else’s phone, since that someone else can tell you how to use it.
But this day, since she was calling me from her cell phone, I knew we had an emergency. Why else would she have bothered to figure out how to use her cell phone?
“And whatever possessed you to get the phone to work?” I asked.
“Because I’m at the nursery and I found a sale flat of double petunias,” she proclaimed. I could tell she was very proud of herself. An emergency, indeed!
“Well hot-diggety! Bring ‘em on home!” I said.
I had barely recovered from our last shopping spree.
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flats and flats of plants needing planting
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These are the summer plants I buy each year to fill the pots on my deck and at my front door. It’s a mixed bunch of shade and sun lovers, since one area near the front door is in direct sun, while much of the deck gets lots of shade, thanks to three huge oak trees. There are, at the very least, coleus, petunias, marigolds, lobelia, portulaca, impatiens, and vincas.
It’s a big job to remove the spent winter annuals, freshen up the soil as needed and get everything replanted, to put it mildly. But I love every minute of it, and oh my, is it ever worth it!
Now Butterfly was bringing home another flat of plants. Every year, twice a year, I tell myself I’m going to convert these pots and beds to perennials! Then, again, I fall for the luscious blooms of certain annuals and once again I’m replanting the same pots and beds. You’d think I’d learn.
This is an example of what the flower trailer has looked like in summers past. I’m too cheap to buy the fancy, schmancy 6-packs of flowers for this old beater trailer (hey, it takes a lot of them – like ½ a flat!), so we’re always on the look-out for a sale flat that will fill up this trailer and the two old concrete sinks by the swinger.
Now you can understand, can’t you, why Butterfly would consider finding a sale flat of double petunias, not just singles, an emergency for which it was necessary to fire up the ol’ cell phone? She certainly wasn’t going to spend my ten bucks without my permission, even though she loves a good double flower and clearly thought this was the buy of the century. Here she’d found 12 “pony-paks” (72 plants) of mixed colors! As you can see in the above photo, sometimes we end up with just one color.
First I cleared out the deader than dead pansies and got rid of the weeds that were trying to set up house.
Lucky did a fine job guarding the little petunias while I worked. The dog does not let me out of his sight.
While I worked with the plants, Butterfly was busy trimming trees. She’d rather keep busy doing something else than watch me practice tough love on the petunias. You have to understand that the sale flats are on sale for a reason. The plants are tall, gangly, overgrown, and root-bound. But that’s ok with me. I know how to take care of all of that, especially with petunias.
First I get the soil freshened up, if necessary, with a little of Butterfly’s homemade compost. Next I mix in a starter fertilizer for transplants. Then I add some slow-release fertilizer to help the little guys make it through the long hot summer. Then in the dirt they go!
Next comes the part that makes Butterfly squeal.
I chop off all their heads and flower buds! Butterfly cannot stand to see a blossom “wasted”. It just plain hurts her. I know that a good gardener is a “pincher”. The only way to get these petunias to be nice bushy plants with lots of blossoms is to pinch, pinch, pinch. She knows it, too – she just doesn’t want to be the one to do it. She’s been known to take all the “murdered blossoms” and make a bouquet out of them.
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Just before the final touch comes a nice layer of gorilla hair (redwood mulch) to help keep the moisture in and the weeds away. Then comes the part the Electric Horseman hates, but is absolutely necessary or the plants will disappear overnight: Wire. I cover the whole thing with sections of fence to keep the deer from making short work of all my hard work (and money). Usually the deer don’t bother our plants this early in the year. Fall is normally the time when we have the most trouble with them and their hungry ways. It’s been so dry this year, though, that they are already running out of food and have started to eat anything and everything.
Pretty soon you start to not even see the wire. It also works (on the ground) to keeps dogs out of the flowers. It’s mutli-purpose wire! But Electric Horseman still hates it. I’ve told him to come up with a better solution, but so far he hasn’t.
The swinger has her own secret garden. Unfortunately, she is far enough away from the both houses that the deer wreak havoc on it if we don’t put plenty of wire barricades in place.
I’ll get back to you when my petunias have recovered from their tough love. They’ll be a sight to behold. If the deer leave them alone.
