Gardening for dummies

I am not one to grow plants. I've heard people say, "get a cactus, you can't kill them".

Umm, yeah you can, and I did! Mama still hasn't forgiven me for that one yet.

Being in the new house makes me feel all-domestic and stuff. Surprising, huh? Anyway, on one of our excursions to Wal Mart, Andrew and I went through the garden section. I was eyeballing on the plants and smart-ass had to point out that I kill everything I have ever brought home. But this one was different. It said: Gardening for Dummies. It even came with directions. And they are as follows: stick finger in plant, if dry, water, if wet, don't water. Yup, I can do that!!! Or so I thought.

I bring this flower home and Steve humors me and puts my plant hanger up beside the steps and I hang it up. Well, everyday, I noticed it looked a little more peaked than the day before. Even my climbing strawberry vines are looking sickly. I was watering it every other day, even talking to the damn thing, but no luck, it looked like I had killed another plant. Then one of Steve's friends came over and was looking at my poor pitiful plant and he tells me I'm frying it. HUH?? A plant can get too much sunlight? Why didn't the Gardening for Dummies pot tell me that? Well, come to find out, it did. It has a tag thingy placed in the pot. It gave me all the information I needed. Come to find out, I'm the proud owner of impatiens and they only need 4 hours of sunlight per day.

I move the plant to the front of the house, where the sunlight only hits in late afternoon. The damn thing still was dying. I couldn't figure it out. I had it hanging in the perfect spot for sunlight. I assumed it was getting water from the afternoon thunderstorms. Apparently not. It seems our old farmhouse had better guttering than I thought and my poor plant was dying of thirst.

I started watering her on Thursday and then this morning, I noticed the blooms. Steve and I had to get some pictures, because after all, it's my first flower that I killed and brought back to life and it has such cute little flowers. On the side of the pot we both noticed some printing that says: SUN/EVIL

I reckon if I'm gonna be all-domestic and stuff, I ought to learn to read all the directions, huh? I could have avoided this to begin with. But it seems to have forgiven me for frying and dehydrating it, so it gave me some flowers. Now if I could only get my Mama to do the same. Forgive me that is, not give me flowers.