Plants With a Story

Most often we plan and plant our garden, water, feed and weed throughout the summer and then just enjoy what we have created but the flowers in the pictures above sort of created themselves.

In the first picture you see a lot of different pots, some cracked or damaged from time and weather. They sit in a little group of leftovers just before you step into my backyard. They are indeed leftovers. I never throw old pots away just because they aren't perfect anymore because old and weathered ones have a charm of their own. This little grouping represents pots that have seen their glory days but still have a place in my garden. I filled them with leftover plants from my planned garden plots and pots, too. That little area is especially lush this year and it must be due to the hot and humid summer we had.

In the large black pot (reclaimed from some tree or bush I once brought home) is a variegated impatiens that I wasn't sure would live when I planted it. I'd stripped the soil from around it to bring it home from Florida and then took too long to replant it. But I never give up hope if there's any chance at all so I did plant it and used a piece of sweet potato vine to keep the poor sickly thing from falling over and nurtured them until they grew healthy and lovely.

In the second picture is a pot holding another of those pathetic, half dead variegated impatiens, this time held up with a few pieces of regular impatiens. It, too, has grown healthy and lush, almost brought back from the dead. It just goes to show you that sometimes a sickly plant just needs a little time to recover it's beauty and it's best not to give up hope too soon. I think it helped to put other plants around the sick ones so what was left of their poor roots wouldn't dry out from too much sun exposure.

It's fun to put together your own vision of what you want your garden to look like but I think it's more fun to work with a struggling plant and give it new life. I should have taken a picture of the two once sickly variegated impatiens to show just what bad shape they were in last May. I'll bet they're still twisted in odd shapes underneath but it doesn't matter. They've survived and flourished.