Friday, July 22, 2011

The $6.51 Solution

The other day, I was walking up to my front door and took a good, hard look at it. Can you see the problem?

Yeah. A handsome garden pot with nothing growing in it. Nothing says "I care about first impressions" like a pot full of dusty pebbles on your front porch.

And the Cyclamen to the right side wasn't looking so good, either. Kind of...tilting. Losing steam.

What was wrong with it? I picked up the plant to peek underneath, and this is what I found:

Euwwww! The poor thing was sitting in water (never good for a plant), and to make it sadder, the water seems to have drawn, then drowned, every June bug in the neighborhood.

Poor June bugs; I love them. They remind me of my childhood in Kansas. Such silly, bumbling bugs.

Anyhow, trapped water is what happens when you stick potted plants (with drainage holes in the bottom of the pot) into ornamental pots (with no drainage holes whatsoever). And then forget that the gardeners come by once a week and water the whole thing to Kingdom Come.

So I tipped out the excess water and the dead June bugs....

And went to my local garden center, where I found a lovely Boston Fern on sale for just $6.51, including tax:

Because there's more space to the right side of my front door, I put the fluffy fern there and moved the Cyclamen to the narrower, left side:

Balance--and greenery--restored. And it only cost $6.51.

I'm still sad about the dead June bugs, though.

2 comments:

  1. Poor June Bugs. Nice new arrangement at your front door, though...which, by the way, is a gorgeous blue! I'm really interested in front door colors right now because we just repainted our house - same lovely "Old Manse" grey with white trim, but gave the white door a new look with 6(!) coats of "Caliente Red" (it took that many to cover the white and keep it from "bleeding" through the red). LOVE the red - such fun, playful, pizazzzz!

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  2. I love a red door. But for me, for this house, it's gotta be periwinkle blue.

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