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growing a green thumb



It was a cactus. The first plant I bought when we moved to our new apartment in Carry le Rouet. It died after a few months probably of too much water, lack of sun or a broken heart. Even then, I still get an occasional plant to bring a little nature in the house & actually being forced to take care of one when friends give them as gifts. Afterall, I grew up with a mother where flowers bloom on the path she walks on. So I thought plants just grow like that. Until my cactus died & realized despite of growing up with 20 different orchids & plants, it doesn't make you a green thumb.



Every plant I brought in the house has wilted & died. This never made me get fake flowers & plants because there is really something about growing plants that soothes me. And I'm not just quoting that from any book. I can't live without any plants inside our house so, I started with tropical plants. They stuck with me & gave me hope. I still have my 7 year old Scindapsus, one of the first plants that survived me. 



Ever since we moved house, I got to kill tens of plants in our garden. I experimented with varieties & with seasons. Afterall, there's fun in plowing & digging in the dirt. Am I so happy to move into a garden that is pretty much manicured, although some of them are misplaced. Some of them are so old & established that I might be the end of them but so far, they seem to like me. There are four varieties of roses with different colors. There are two old grapevines. A relatively young apricot tree who gave us seven fruits last year & five this year. Two just rotted on the tree, one disappeared and we saved two. A very old lavander plant and every year, three tulips just appear on our plant box.



My star plant is my Calamondin or Calamansi. I think I already tried five pots & this year, I finally found the champion. Not by luck but by research. Like using the good soil, using garden marbles for a correct drainage (they hate wet feet), and actually speaking to it. I kept it inside the house since I bought it late last year & my mother told me that once I put it out in the sun, it will start blooming. And it surely did, just a few weeks after. It has new sprouts of growth, the first time since it arrived. I've been dreaming to have a nice glass of Calamansi juice.

Gardening, like in life, can teach virtues, as simple as it may seem.  
I am fighting against slimey slugs & snails who has been eating my strawberries, a little of my parsley leaves, and the flowers of my Cymbidium, who after six years it was given to me by my aunts, finally bloomed for the first time. Those tiny green worms who are residing in some of my tomatoes, and Vidar who sleeps on my ground cover plants. The joys of gardening. A little more training & I'm moving to seed planting.

Makis

From Manila to Paris, then to Marseille & to the Côte d'Azur, now in Singapore, clinging to a map of three worlds, where everything becomes all relative.

3 comments:

  1. planting is therapeutic :-) My husband and I love growing plants too, sometimes I have success with them but most often I dont but it doesnt discourages me to continue planting..

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    1. I just had my longest living basilic plant to date (and still growing) after countless pots! I think I got less affected by dying plants now & just kept insisting. sometimes it pays off, sometimes I just get another pot. Nice to see back here, ateng!

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  2. I envie you :( ! I hope I could take care of my garden like you do. Try and try until I succeed, but how many plants are going to die before I succeed lol ???

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