Cinderella Planters

We got high-centered--all of us--caught on the fence between winter and spring.  Our hearts surge forward, wanting to plant, garden, and flower; and then it snows on us and pours so much rain that every step toward the garden leaves miniature foot-print-sized lakes behind us overflowing along our route.

Neglected, frosted, ugly planters

But what is a heart to do?  Mine was pumping with the emotion of earth and beauty for the Things I get to do today.  And before me, while the rains held back the tears measured out for today, were the dregs of several planters--left behind--too ugly to be invited anywhere.  Surely I could be distracted from the garden-spring thing by coming to the rescue of these tired plants.  It's an opportunity to make something from nothing.  That's the sort of juicy challenge any Handy Andy would adore.

So get to work.  Grab the gloves.  Pull out all frost-killed plants.  Remove all dead leaves and leggy stems from the remaining live ones.  Divide clumped and overgrown plants.  Repot them like a group photo shoot: short ones on the front edges, medium and tall in the center and back.

Added kale (new dress), primrose (sparkle) and parsley.
The rest (slippers) were salvaged from the two "uglies"

The winter was rough on the houseplants that had migrated into the original arrangements. Even combining the two planters there were not enough growies to fill the larger one that sits on top of my rain barrel.  A little wandering through the yard, however, yielded part of a clump primroses that needed dividing, a handful of Italian Parsley* and one healthy kale.

You can do this, too.  Come on, be a Fairy Godmother to your tired, tattered, and tarnished planters from last season.  Give them new sparkle, find a pretty "dress," and clean up the "slippers."


*See "Italian Generosity" posted November 14, 2011.

Italian Generosity

Tony just gave it to me--a mound of parsley seed so generous that it spilled over the edge of my outstretched hand. My neighbors are the best.  Hand-picked, every one of them, for their unique qualities and contributions to my life--this time in the form of never-ending Italian (flat leaf) parsley.

I planted two types of parsley this last spring.  Each seed was blessed and coddled and watered and stroked and loved and tended and watched until it grew big enough to live on its own outside.  And when the summer was done, my Italian parsley was slender and sparse.  Disappointment was the flavor of all those efforts.  And as I think about it, the planting and tending process was very much from my Norse heritage and not my Italian side.  Truth be known, genetically I don't have an Italian side, and I think I was just too stiff.  They don't do it that way.

Old pot with dirt and parsley seeds.  Even the rooting around
of a pesky squirrel did not derail the process.

So Tony told me how to plant my spilling-over gift so that I would have parsley forever: find a big, old pot with dirt; throw the seeds in the pot; scratch the dirt a little bit; keep it moist.  That's it.  I'll need to do that again next spring or summer.  The plants will grow.  They will reseed on their own the second year (that's why I'm supposed to do it for them the first summer) and the cycle will just keep going.  Parsley forever.



If all the Things I get to do today were flavored with "lighten up," "let go," "ease," "flow," "throw it in the pot, scratch it and keep it moist," how easily would life spring forth and grow with abundance--forever.

Lush, large, Italian Generosity