Plants - my weak spot

Did I ever mention that I’m a person that picks up strays. Yeah…I know I’ve mentioned stray boys living in our home from time to time…actually that has calmed down and it has only been the three of us for a few months now.

No, I don’t pick up animal strays…the strays I collect are plants :-) - crazy I know, but I cannot help myself.

The lady next door regularly rearranges her garden and she’ll put something in and a few months later pull it out to replace it with something else.

She always pops by to ask if I want the rejected plant. I never say no.

For my birthday, my work colleagues gave me a huge pot plant and a voucher to a garden centre – quite a bit of money for me to spend on my favourite pastime – besides reading and writing. One of the women once remarked that whenever she sees a lavender bush, she thinks of me.

I hate culling anything in my garden…much to hubby’s frowning disapproval. I let things grow wild…my philosophy is that everything is there for a reason…and each spring our garden springs to life and we quite often have new visitors settling into the soil and blessing us with their presence.

So…what is this leading up to?

Well, this morning I was making cups of tea for patients…I pressed the foot pedal to lift the lid on the bin to throw away the teabags and my eye fell on a plant in the bin. My instant reaction was distress and a thought flashed through my mind, ‘a plant is for life, not just for Christmas’…you know, like the stickers you see on cars saying ‘a puppy is for life, not just for Christmas’. Yeah…that’s me.

It’s a poinsettia – here in the UK, it is a Christmas plant because, I assume, of the colours. Upset, I hauled it out of the bin. There was nothing wrong with it…it was still in good condition…although slightly mangled from being in the bin. It’d had been sitting on the windowsill in the kitchen of the ward. Why throw it away?

I’ve brought it home and put it on the windowsill in my kitchen.

I’m not sure when my love for plants started. I was useless as a younger person…I’d forget about them and they’d die.

Nowadays I love plunging my hands into the soil and envision sending healing into the ground and then into the plants. You’d think I’d be an earth mother of some kind…and yet I am not. Hehe…or maybe I am a secret/closet one.

I talk to my plants all the time and they reward me with cheerful healthiness and flowers. My house is full, especially the bathroom which is huge and filled with light. I’ve got several creepers growing around the bathroom, giving the impression of being in a jungle. If I could, I’d live in a tree house or snug and surrounded in a ground house with plants living in the ceiling or roots surrounding me.

What can I say…I’m a sucker for plants. They give so much and demand so little in return.

I’ve always loved the idea of having a proper Christmas tree, but can never bring myself to buy the cut down trees. We have them in our homes for a few weeks and then they get thrown away. I cannot…simply cannot. Don’t ask me why…so we have a fake tree.

Once we bought a fir tree in a pot with the idea that we’d leave it outside for most of the year and then at Christmas bring it into the house for decorating. Eventually it got too big and we planted it in the garden.

I might be acting silly…but to me plants are alive…and when I say plants I mean everything from trees down to the so-called weeds. And yet...I don't have an issue cutting flowers. I always ask permission before I cut and they are happy to fill my house with their cheerful energy. Whenever I prune, again I ask first and tell them what I will be pruning and why. Again the same goes for picking anything for eating. Crazy man crazy.

But I suppose what it comes down to, is treating Mother Earth and her bounty with respect...and honouring them for their contribution to our health.

We went to a wildlife sanctuary down the road from us and one of their boards says ‘Weeds are flowers too’ - hubby grinned as he read it and asked if I’d put that sign there…cos it sure looked like one of my quotes :-)

I think this is an AA Milne quote actually. We live down the road from Pooh Bridge and the Hundred Acre Wood, the setting for his Winnie the Pooh books. Hehe…yeah…we did wander through the woods with the kids regularly when they were little and threw sticks from the bridge to watch them float away.

Ah…there’s nothing like imagination is there?

I cannot wait for spring to sprung.