It's Working

Before the SPCP (Society For Prevention Of Cruelty To Plants) comes after me, I feel it necessary to defend my position on my boot camp for foliage.  It is said that which does not kill us makes us stronger, and that is the premise of the shape up or ship out program.  Steve gave me a tiny Zygo cactus (Christmas cactus) back in the mid-1980s.  It has been repotted any number of times, lives in the round room, has grown large, and blooms every year.  Miniature roses on the deck were brought from the old house nearly 18 years ago; I don't remember how long I'd had them there before we moved.  They bloom tiny red and white roses annually.  Hyssop is a wimp plant that has never thrived in camp; I quit trying.  The philodendron in the living room has moved from one table to another for nine years, fading and rebounding wherever it is placed.  I thought I'd lost it when I recently left it in the sun on the deck after giving it a much needed shower (it was dusty), but it came through the crisis and is recuperating nicely, a testimony to its strength of will.  Two African violets have sat on windowsills in the round room, drooping now and again under benign neglect.  Yes, I make them beg.  Both are perky (at the moment) and full of flowers.  An azalea under the deck couldn't cut the mustard and was washed out of the program.  In 1995, I took a new job.  In the office where I was to work, the previous employee had left a potted Chinese evergreen plant that was gasping its last breath with its  three remaining leaves.  I asked if I might tend it and was given permission.  That evergreen lives in the bathroom, full and bushy, and still puts out white lilylike blooms every year.  It gets a drink of water only after its done calisthenics, bending to touch its toes.  A friend would come to my house and surreptitiously put a finger in the dirt of a limp potted plant.  "Stop that!  I saw what you did.  That plant needs to finish its bend-and-stretch before it will get a drink!  I won't tolerate weaklings."

Yes, I'm a tough DI, but I can't argue with success.  Whatever might be thought of my methods, the program is working.