Adventures with me and my brown thumb

You know, I've never been accused of having a green thumb. In fact, my thumb color tends more on the brown side. My dad was a genius gardener! He grew things like orchids and bromeliads. He grew strawberries and avocados. He build an orchid house and knew that if he put fish guts around the avocado tree it would create the biggest and tastiest fruit anyone had ever known! He had seedling and saplings and a fruit picker on a pole. Me? I have gardening gloves that I can never find. A perpetually unopened bag of soil. And really nice Fiskars gardening shears that we left in the storage closet at the Florida house. That's all. It seems pointless for me to have anything else. My idea of gardening is what I can grow in a container on the porch. My theory on plant buying is that I stick to annuals. An annual is defined as: "...a plant that usually germinates, flowers and dies in one year." I figure they are destined to die anyway, so if I kill them a little premature then it's not as bad as killing a perennial. You familiar with Pothos? It is a perennial. The easiest thing to keep alive on this planet. They are even recommended for people with "black thumbs". Sad to say, but I have been responsible for many a Pothos death. I have no earthly idea how I got to be so bad at this. One of my greatest disappointments in my life is that I killed a precious plant put into my possession-a cutting from my Great Aunt Ada's key lime tree. (I am hanging my head in shame.) Her tree was glorious! It bore fruit all the time that kept us all in a constant stream of key limeade and key lime pies! Each of us kids got a cutting from that tree that my Dad nurtured as a sapling and passed onto us to grow into a tree. I believe that Sisterdear and BrotherDoug have both been successful at this, not me...
Now when Charles and I moved to Pennsylvania, I thought, "Oh! There are some really cool plants up there that I would love to grow." I LOVE lilacs, hydrangeas and peonies. Three more green things that under my care would suffer and die! So I stuck to the annuals. In the fall I purchased mums. These were fantastic! When I bought them they were in full flower and available in tons of colors. You could just plop the ugly container into a pretty one at home and that was it. I didn't even have to re-pot it. Then when it's season was over, it knew it, I knew it. It wasn't a tearful good-bye. Winter, now that was super easy! A Christmas tree. Hey! It's dead already, I am way ahead on that game. Just have to keep the dead tree green for about a month. I got this one-sugar in the water-check! But now it is spring. A beautiful time for most folks, but for us plant growing challenged people it is torture! We see all the beautiful spring displays of plants who need good homes. I even bought a few early on thinking that I was safe as long as it is an annual. I brought those plants home (a pothos was in the bunch) and put them on the front porch only-didn't yet want to commit to the back porch! I did all the right stuff. Re-potted them into bigger containers. Watered and fertilized with Miracle Grow. Rotated them for even sun exposure. Found the right spot to make the partial shade-ers happy and the full sun-ers happy. Removed dead leaves. Watched for bugs. Heck! I would even talk to them when I was out on the porch. All good stuff. But then...our area was put under a freeze warning. I didn't know...I just didn't know. I went to bed a happy plant owner and woke up to shriveled up, wilted, brown and very unhappy plants. I quickly apologized and brought them all into the house. It was too late. I lost some good plants that day.
I didn't buy more plants until I was sure that the really cold weather was gone. No, it's not what I would call warm up here yet, but everyone has their spring plants out for sale, in the ground and on their porches so I assumed it was safe. I bought pansies, pink cosmos, a fern, some yellow flowers and some purple flowers. All so pretty! I kept them in their original pots-not wanting to get too attached. Then last weekend I finally transferred them to pretty pots, found homes for them on both the front and back porch and was feeling pretty happy with plant life! That was until this morning. I hopped on the computer and the little Weather Channel desktop icon thingey was making it's thunderstorm noise and blinking. Bad news... As I read the "weather alert" a lump was forming in my throat. "A freeze warning is issued when sub-freezing temperatures are forecast to threaten outdoor plants. Those with agricultural or gardening interests in the warned area are advised to harvest or protect tender vegetation. Potted plants normally left outdoors should be covered of brought inside." Curse my brown thumb! A better gardener would have known sooner! My dad would have put plastic tarps on the plants in the ground and would have had those plants in last night. Once again I rushed outside and while carting my plants inside to warmer digs, I was apologizing and begging them not to die. Those plants need your prayers, folks!
Inside my house I have 100% given up on indoor plants. All the greenery and floral in my house comes from Val's Basket Warehouse in Tampa. If this round of plants die, I have to ask myself one question...how horrible would it look to put silk plants outside?