“I saw you last night and got that old feeling”...
“That Old Feeling”, lyrics by Lew Brown, music by Sammy Fain
My shin sports a brand new welt. My hands could etch glass. And the boots I’ve worn every snowy day this winter have suddenly sprung a leak. My feet have ’that cold feeling’.
There are already worries a plenty….too much weather, too little help, too many plants for too few pots….stuck trucks and frozen vents and cancelled orders. An unexplained shortage of sunpatiens. The perennial lack of scaevola. Happens every year….’that old feeling’.
But problems a plenty flutter away like dry leaves any time I slit the packing tape on a box labeled ‘Live Plants’: instead, I hear Ella swinging soulfully about ‘that old feeling’….as I pull out a tray of potential springtime.
It’s been that way for years.
Never mind the patience Blake exhibited when, instead of an intrusive family, I brought a collection of houseplants that was more than enough to provide a healthy level of oxygen in our first apartment. No furniture, no problem! After we moved to the farm, I discovered a new hobby: propagation! A pinch here or broken stem there stuck into a tiny 2” plastic pot and placed under a cheap fluorescent shop light and lovingly watched over and watered carefully almost always yielded a baby. Hey! I was good at this! Not only that, but there were hobbyists out there who supported their plant habits by selling cuttings and fresh leaves to folks like me who wanted to try a different begonia or a fancier African violet….
Our tiny house was being overrun.
Unfortunately, I did not have a mail order business...or any other kind of business...that would offset the increases of the plant population due to propagation and/or acquisition. I tried. I painted a sign with the name “Hurst Greenery” and displayed it at a weekend flea market at the Tarkio Community Building. Even seen through the foggy, forgiving resolution of an Instamatic camera, it’s a pretty pathetic little effort.
Another attempt at inventory reduction from a few years later….
These look a little better…
Eventually it became clear that the peak of the house plant boom had passed. I had a yard, a garden, and two cute little girls that liked to play outdoors more than hang out in a barren basement. Propagation by cuttings gave way to propagation by seeds. A few trays and some plastic wrap and my germination chamber was complete. Seeds were cheap!
And...it turns out, the plants one grows from seeds could be sold. Here are a couple more shots of some early efforts.
I cringe now when I see the weeds under the benches, the stretched petunias, the starved tomatoes and marigolds. The camera doesn’t lie; there are also pictures of equally ugly poinsettias and overgrown impatiens, jury rigged wiring and some home grown greenhouses that weren’t up to the wind and weather load of Deadman’s Hollow.
They were all part and parcel of the learning curve.
These old photos have a certain piquancy. They are lovable in the way your first burnt cakes or tough roasts are funny years later.
“There’ll be no new romance for me, it’s foolish to start….”
That old (Spring) feeling….
is still in my heart.
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