Had my plants contracted the botanical world’s equivalent of COVID?
By CAROL UNGAR‘EVERYTHING DIES in my garden except geraniums and…’ (photo credit: PIXABAY)
Before the pandemic I was an indifferent gardener. Every day or every other day, I’d splash recycled clothes dryer water over my garden – a jumble of windowsill and balcony pots and planters, all of them geraniums and cacti – species I favored because they managed to thrive in spite of my care or lack thereof.I have had more ambitious moments. Once, years ago, I tended a box of velvety deep purple petunias, gaudily glorious until they wilted and died. More recently I grew vegetables from kitchen scabs, but after several handfuls of sour cherry tomatoes, a few misshapen kohlrabies and one giant bug-infested celery, I yanked the roots out of the ground and called it quits. Now my planters needed to be filled but with what? More geraniums and cacti, of course.Last week I drove out to a nursery to buy them, a rare excursion in these COVID-contracted days. Not much of a story except that while ambling through that steamy tented Eden I met the snake – really just another shopper, name unknown – who intuited my dilemma.“Try these,” she said directing my eyes to boxes of flashy yellow and white daisies.“I’ll kill them. Everything dies in my garden except geraniums and…”“You won’t kill them,” she promised.I don’t know why I believed her. For all I knew, she might have been employed by the nursery to woo me into additional purchases – but like an obedient child, I placed the daisies in my cart.Then she introduced me to something else, a vine-like species beguilingly called a “desert rose,” topped with colorful flower heads that opened by day and closed by night.“Look at the colors.”A lemon yellow, white and hot Schiaperelli pink, they dazzled.Of course they ended up in my cart, too. How could I leave such beauty behind?When I got home I put them into the earth, taking uncharacteristic care to water prodigiously and even massage a scoop of compost into the soil.How pretty my new plants looked, the daisies bright as sunshine, the brilliant desert rose blooms mysteriously alternating between revelation and concealment. During these long months of quarantine, I’d heard about others who had turned to gardening as a path to joy. Perhaps this was my path, too.But the perky white daisies had developed some form of alopecia and my sultry desert rose now assumed a weary wilted mien. By the end of the week the white daisies had become straggly brown stems, the yellow daisies had gone bald and the desert rose continued to wilt. Had my plants contracted the botanical world’s equivalent of COVID?Mentally I prepared for their demise. Next time, I told myself, I’d stick with the species I couldn’t kill.THIS SHOULD have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t. One hot day in the midst of watering I noticed a long-tailed creature which I assumed was a rat. Shaking with terror, I phoned Ruth.Everyone needs a Ruth in their lives, the friendly unassuming neighbor who is also an encyclopedia of all things from car repair to cooking to horticulture. Ruth had once been a professional gardener.She arrived quickly. After briefly poking around she identified the critter as a lizard.“Leave it alone. It’ll kill mosquitoes.”She had just turned to leave when I called her back.“What do you think?” I asked, pointing to my ailing plants.Immediately she pressed her fingers into the soil.“Too dry and the roots are exposed.”“I didn’t realize.”I hung my head in shame.“If they were children I’d call a social worker,” Ruth winked, her pale blue eyes twinkling.“Any hope?”Now Ruth was picking the deadheads from the yellow daisies.“They may come back. How much do you water?”I showed her the recycled two-gallon detergent container I used as a watering can.“You’ll need to water more.”That may have sounded like a pain in the neck, but it energized me. I was invested, determined to see my plant babies recover and thrive. Two weeks have passed and things are better. Each morning the desert roses salute me in full bloom and each evening I’m witness to their retreat. As to the white daisies, they are gone... but I’m not too gloomy. Unlike other losses, this is one that is easy to replace.As for the yellow daisies, one bush thrives brightly; the other is still green but flowerless. But I’m hopeful.And I’m having a good time. Micro-gardening connects me to nature and reminds me that even now, the world is a place where flowers grow.The writer is a grandmother, author, journalist, writing teacher and former Jerusalem Post reporter. She currently teaches memoir writing on Zoom. Details: ungar.carol@gmail.com
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