Nothing But Flowers

We have a bad habit, Accountant Boy and I. We buy plants on a whim, then we leave them too long in whatever pot they came in. When it finally becomes apparent that the plants are days, maybe hours away from their last, unrecoverable wilt, we throw them in the ground and hope for the best. This plant falls into the "Oh my God! It LIVED!" category. When my trainer, we'll call her The Amazon, got married, she had hydrangeas on all of the tables at the reception. At the end of the night, those of us milling about had these centerpieces thrust at us. I don't know anything about hydrangeas, so I kept it in a nursery pot for the first few months, and when all of its leaves turned black and dropped, I felt guilty and sad. I left the plant in a corner of the patio and tried to ignore it. When the weather warmed, the plant leafed out again. "Oh my God! It LIVED! Throw it in a bigger pot! HURRY!"

I asked Ron the Gardener about it, and he said, "Wants to be in the ground. They get big." I couldn't figure out if "they get big" was supposed to encourage or deter me. He's a laconic fellow, Ron the Gardener.

"Uh, how about out front? Would it be happy out there? I don't want to put it out there and watch it die, because that's totally demoralizing to see that happen every day, so, you know, is that a good idea? Because this plant's kind of sentimentally special to me, and I want to make sure I don't do something stupid with it."

"Yep. Next week." Like I said, laconic.

It seems really happy in its new spot, so I think we made the right choice. It almost looks like we planned it that way.


Nearby, I panic-planted my Mexican dayflowers. Is that the most beautiful blue flower you've ever seen? Each flower only lasts a day, hence the name, but every day there's a new one. The flowers spring out of a single pod, one after the other, like a shark tooth rotating forward as the tooth in front of it falls out. I bought three of these plants at Home Depot a few years ago, and they've been in the ground, in three pots, in one small pot, and now back in the ground again. I had no idea what they were when I bought them, just that they looked like little corn plants. It's my other bad plant habit - I pick the weirdest, scrubbiest looking plants from the back shelf in the far corner of the garden center. My yard is the planted equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys.

Guess what I did over the weekend? I finished Cobweb! Where are the pictures, you might ask? Fair question. I haven't taken any, because I can't decide if I really and truly am finished. See, there's this whole issue with me making it a tad too wide at the bottom, which makes it perfect for a wrap sweater, which it's not supposed to be, but certainly could be if I wanted to make ties or figure out how to fasten it. Also, after a couple of hours of waffling on the edging and getting a few inches into crocheting it each time, I still haven't decided if a scalloped edge is the way to go. Plain edge is looking better by the moment. So it's not as simple as saying it's done, because I haven't stopped fiddling with it yet.


Here's where it was a week ago. I finished it over the weekend, thanks largely to Accountant Boy, who set me up on the back patio with a glass of wine and my knitting while he did all of the nagging, unfinished yard work. He's the coolest.