I'm an Amaryllis Killer

Word of the Day

Omniloathe - An all-encompassing feeling of disgust or repugnance toward a subject.

My Mom has a green thumb. Actually, I think she's got more than one green thumb. To be honest, I think all her other fingers are green along with both her arms. She can make ANYTHING grow. Well...maybe not everything, because last time I looked, before heading back to Arizona last fall, the Venus Flytraps that she was trying to baby weren't doing so well but that might be because my sister and I didn't inherit her green thumbs and we pretty much killed the ones that she gave us before Mom stepped in to rescue them. Not her fault. They were still hanging in there...barely...last fall.

My Mom did something magical to the amaryllis plants that she gave me before Thanksgiving this year, amaryllis bulbs that came from a single bulb that a friend of mine bought for me when we were college room-mates which I gave to Mom before I could kill it. Knowing my record for killing plants, I'm sure my Mom felt sorry for it and snaffled it before I could do it in. Mom not only managed to keep the thing growing for the last thirty years, years where the bulb has had several baby bulbs, creating three large bulbs where there once was only one, she managed to do something magical so that two of those bulbs are going to actually bloom. I'm totally amazed. I've never had much luck with amaryllis plants...after that initial blooming. I either kill the plant shortly after the plant blooms, beautifully, or I baby the plant for bloomless years before I finally manage to kill the poor thing.

I wish I had even one green thumb. My Mom tells me that I should re-pot my amaryllis bulbs (the bulbs that I purchased for myself this Christmas and the one surviving bulb that I haven't killed from last Christmas) into clay pots and then plunge them out into the ground in a shady spot in my landscape for this summer...where they can suck up water from my drip system while I'm at The Lake. I plan to give it a try but we'll just have to see if Mom's magic will keep these poor bulbs alive.

Murphyism of the Day

The Twain Observation

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

- Anaïs Nin (1903 - 1977)