I???m looking over a yard-weed clover
April 8, 2011
This is the story of an unlikely, wonderful houseplant. It began life as a science experiment for a book I wrote. I needed to sprout some seeds for a growing experiment, so I got one of those little pots from the dollar area of Target. It had clover seeds.
February 24, 2010. I sowed the seeds and used the incandescent bulb in my swing-arm lamp as the light source. The office air is very dry, especially in the winter which this was, so I made mini-greenhouses with sandwich bags to keep the dirt moist. The seeds sprouted in just four or five days and never looked back. Clover, it seems, grows very quickly and very enthusiastically.
March 16, 2010. It wasn’t long until it outgrew its starter pots. I transfered the seedlings to somewhat larger pots sat back for the ride. At times I almost felt like I could see the growth happening before my eyes! (That’s garlic in the foreground that I grew from cloves for a separate experiment.)
May 11, 2010. Even in the now too-small pots, the clover thrived, and became a tourist attraction for visitors from outer space.
July 13, 2010. I soon moved the clover into its permanent home. I put the plants from both small pots together in the new large pot and that’s where they’ve been ever since, growing the heck out of it!
April 8, 2011. For over a year now, I have enjoyed this yard weed as a unique and conversation-starting desk plant. It has been perfectly happy under my lamp and I love how hairy and wild it is. Because of its success, I started some strawberry plant seeds the same way (in the small cup on the overturned pot) and though they have sprouted and the leaves are taking on the serrated quality of mature leaves, it just doesn’t grow quickly at all. The seeds took about two weeks to sprout and the growth you see in the photo above is about two months’ worth. Quite a bit less satisfying. Yesterday I transplanted them to this slightly larger cup in hopes that they would find the extra leg room inspirational. If they ever become worthy of it, the overturned pot will be theirs. Time will tell.
My desktop garden also includes several philodendrons which love the conditions. And just recently, I started buying a stem or two of cut flowers at a nearby florist because it adds a nice element of gaiety—a touch of fancy, if you will—to the environment.
In case you’re wondering, my clover has not yet produced any four-leafers.
Dasie and the Birds
January 2, 2011
One of the by-products of all the snow we had in December is that the lilac bush next to my front window is half-buried. So the little birdies that like to hang out in it have been forced to make use of the snowbank. The cats, naturally, are fascinated. A few times I have exacerbated the situation by tossing birdseed around.
Dasie in particular—my crazy Dasie—loves the birdies. On sunny afternoons, the birds’ shadows on the mini-blinds drive her nuts, probably because they seem closer and attainable. In fact, more than once I’ve seen Dasie leaping for a shadow. After Christmas weekend, I had to repair significant tears and slashes in the plastic covering the window. That kind of bummed me out, because that front window was the smoothest, tightest installation I’ve done in the 15 windows I’ve covered over the years. Oh well. If you look closely in the movie, you can see the clear packing tape I used for the patch job.
Anyway, today was not sunny, so the bird watching was a much calmer affair.
Lilacs in the house
May 19, 2010
I was about five or six in my earliest memory of lilacs. We still lived on Main Street across from the library and had some large lilac bushes in the back yard along the alley. My mom cut some sprigs and brought them inside. The instant the stems hit the water in the vase, a multitude of tiny white mites abandoned blossom like it was the Titanic and scattered out across the brown kitchen table like dandruff on a black turtleneck.
Of course there are many things that I love the smell of, but here in Minneapolis, lilacs are exactly in bloom at the moment and I have one right outside my front window that makes my home smell heavenly.
I think you???d be hard pressed to find someone who found the scent of a lilac to be offensive???a natural lilac, the plant. I completely agree that soaps and lotions?? go overboard on the amount of fragrance. The smell of a plant in the wild is rarely too much. The delicate rose. The mild-mannered carnation. The industrial marigold. My love for the scent of a marigold also goes back to childhood. The house that we moved to after Main Street had a planter in front of the porch, and each summer I got to tend my marigolds, grown from seed. Pleasant memory.
So in my current place, this lilac grows in the corner between my front window and the steps up to my neighbor???s unit. Now that I???ve finally taken the winter-insulating plastic off my windows, I can once again invite in the smell of the outside world; it took about forty-five minutes for the glorious scent of lilac to permeate my entire residence. I am lucky.
This year in particular I have been infatuated with my lilac. Just Saturday, I sat outside reading for three hours in large part because the lilac smelled so good. The other large part was that it was the first day in two weeks to reach into the 70s and forsake 50 and rainy. Plus, this spring (unlike last year) has been wet enough so that all plants are happy. I???ve cut the grass twice already.
I must enjoy this opportunity that Mother Nature has given me while it lasts. I snipped a sprig to have on my desk to inspire me while I was writing. I held my breath as I immersed the end of the stem in the vase. I???m happy to report that the only mass exodus was of divine lilac scent to my nose.
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