Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Winter boarder (2)


When I grew geraniums from seed last spring, a few of the laggards never made it outside to the garden, but stayed on the laundry room sill in small pots. This winter, I moved two up to the bathroom window, which gets bright direct sun for a couple of hours. The third plant, which was truly puny, is still in the laundry room and still in its original yogurt cup, but it has finally decided to bloom.
I'm curious to see what color it turns out to be. When I set nine of the others out in a large square planter, they hadn't yet bloomed; I gave a few extras to Jackie next door. Many of my geraniums turned out a garish fuschia or a shriekingly orange-red (too red for my taste; I much prefer the softer, purer red or the near-salmon red-pink ones), while one of Jackie's ended up the prettiest of the batch: a lovely pink-and-white bicolor. For the rest of the year, I glanced through the fence and admired (well all right, coveted) that one geranium.
Little straggler, runt of the litter, you're my last best hope.
[photo: winter geranium, 2/23/08]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a lovely blog!
It may be wiser to plant seeds identified by color and kind, but planting mixed ones is so much more hopeful and adventurous.

Ron said...

Thanks, Arlene. Because I'm a bit of a seed thief, it's often a matter of "wait and hope" by the time I get around to emptying my pockets (!) and planting seeds. . . I have a poem about that somewhere; I'll track it down and post it.

Checked out your press, by the way: what beautiful books!