Green Thumb? Maybe a green pinky!

I have never been the gardening type. As a child my mother always had a garden planted in our yard. We all had to do our part and help with the weeding, watering and harvesting. Lucky for me I learned early on that I was allergic to grass/plants. I would break out in hives if my skin made contact with the lovely green stuff. Though this was a great excuse it didn't always save me from my duties as gardening gloves were purchased. Now it wasn't just the itchy reaction that made me dislike being in the garden. A large part of it was the high bug quantity in that particular region of the yard. I do not "do" bugs. Of any sort really... I was the type of child to freak out if a ladybug landed on me. I still have to get someone else to kill anything from a teeny house spider to a harmless fly. Whenever it rained I would stare at my feet to make sure that I didn't get any worm guts on my shoes. Really it is a bit ridiculous but I just can't seem to get over my dislike for the creepy things of the earth.

So, the point of that little excerpt was to give you a little background about my experience/inexperience with growing things. Now things haven't improved very much since then.... I seem to be very talented at killing things and that was okay with me cause I didn't care to grow anything (I have since realized that any recent attempts were hopeless as I have a NORTH facing apartment that gets zero direct sunlight).

I don't know what has changed since September but I seem to have this desire to nourish something and see it grow. In the fall I bought a few plants for my classroom to make it seem more 'natural'. I think I started off with 6 (4 were together in one larger pot). I didn't pay much attention to them as they often had too much or too little sunlight as well as too much or too little water (thanks to my students who are in charge of the watering). It didn't take long for 2 of the plants to wither away and die leaving me clueless as to the reason for their demise. It was around this time that I was also getting additional plants as gifts from my students parents and they were all dying too, and very quickly. I was determined at that point that I would NOT let this be my defeat and that I would PROVE that Jennifer Isackson can indeed keep a living thing alive (oh-I had a fish once and it died too-but that was somewhat intentional-another story another time).

From that point I would check up on my plants almost daily to make sure they were doing well. I moved them to better places in the room to get the ideal amount of sunlight and I oversaw the 'watering process' by my students. They really started to perk up at this point and the 2 remaining that were combined in the large pot (which had been dying themselves) started to show signs of improvement. It came to the point last week that I realized I needed to re-pot the plants (is there a word for that? transplant?) so I made a visit to Sunnyside with my friend Tanya.

While having such a nice visit we found some beautiful pots for me and some nice flowers for Tanya (including a little cactus for Teo). I got these pretty new pots to school and transplanted them the first chance I had. Now this is the lesson of the story.... when you get that feeling that you shouldn't put something somewhere because it might get broken, you should heed that warning. I put the plants in some nice spots around my beautiful classroom trusting that the students wouldn't break them...... and I was right, THEY didn't, but I DID!

There was one casualty at school today and that was my bright pink two-tone pot (thankfully my least favourite of the bunch). I was moving the table with the plant on it for our provincial exams this morning and I tipped the table up too far and watched in UTTER HORROR as the plant slid and crashed to the cement floor. At least I can only be mad at myself for breaking it. So the poor plant, that is in desperate need of TLC, is back in its plastic pot where it will now remain to be passed on to the teacher who takes over my position next year.

Now if anyone read this far, you must really like gardening or you will use it against me at some future time when I try to pretend that I am Mother Nature.

I have included a couple pictures of the three plants that are thriving and looking good in their new pretty pots!