Whenever I purchase a plant or bulbs or rhizomes or seeds, I always imagine the most. I always assume my end results will look exactly like the photo on the label.
Needless to say, I wind up disappointed more than once in a while. Like when I bought a box of hostas a few seasons ago, beautiful variegated ones with creamy edges on their bright green leaves. I imagined my crab apple tree ringed in this handsome foliage. I read the boxes instructions and tried to follow them to the T.
Some of the hostas never came up. Others, the slugs ate. But one remains. I can see this hosta from my bedroom windows. This hosta is near the table where I often sit to eat or write or read. It's a special plant to me--the one that reminds me that even when my visions fall short, things turn out okay.
“If you wish to make anything grow you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. ‘Green fingers’ are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpractised. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart. A good garden cannot be made by somebody who has not developed the capacity to know and to love growing things.”
--Russell Page
The Education of a Gardener, 1962
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