It's Hard to be a Plant

Pin It Well, at my house anyway, it's hard to be a plant.

You know how the toys in Toy Story feel about Sid's house? Yeah. That. Plants see us coming and try to play dead so that we'll pick another one.

Last year I had this fabulous rosemary plant. I pulled branches (are they called branches?) off and cooked with them. We had a fabulous relationship, my rosemary plant and I. It was bushy and smelled good and the fresh herbs were amazing.

Did you know that about four drops of gasoline is sufficient to kill an entire rosemary plant? Trust me, it is. Ask me how I know. :-/ One word answer: Brendan. The gas can was empty, or so I thought. I haven't been able to get another rosemary plant growing well since. I've been paying $4 for sprigs (THAT'S the word! SPRIGS!) at the grocery store ever since.

This year we decided to grow tomatoes. Madelyn wanted a topsy turvy for her birthday, so we got her one, and two little tomato plants. One went into the topsy turvy, the other into a planter. Yes, we have a fabulous place in the backyard for planting such things, but between the dog and the boy, we figured that perhaps a planter would be safer. Perhaps we would have been better off to trust the dog.

The topsy turvy appears to be growing well. It's a lot bigger than it started, anyway. No blooms or teeny tomatoes yet, but I'm hopeful. The other one though - it was doing GREAT. One almost ripe tomato and five that were just getting started. I was so excited.

And then today ...


... sigh ...

... it's hard to talk about, so bear with me ...

I went outside and it was shriveled. From fabulous yesterday to shriveled today. This seems a little familiar.

OH BRENDAN!!!

Roundup left out in hopes of gardening. Stupid stupid stupid. Tomatoes versus roundup. Tomatoes down in one.

Sigh.

I'm going to go out today in hopes of finding a replacement. I suspect that it's too late, and I'm going to have to pin all of my tomato hopes on the topsy turvy.

When I DO finally grow a tomato, I will realize that that one little tomato will have cost approximately $712 after buying all of the soil and now three tomato plants. It had better be DARN GOOD.

(and yeah, I know. I can't blame the four year old when I left the empty gas can out last year and the roundup out this year. I'm working to be thankful that he didn't go after the plant from my grandfather's funeral and the amaryllis, and it really does appear the topsy turvy is safe as well.)

And darn it, I can't stay mad at him. He just brought me a picture and told me he loves me. Thank the Lord for cute little boys, especially the one who is trying to climb into my lap right now. Excuse me while I go snuggle the little guy. And I'll try to not be resentful when I eat my salad without a tomato tonight.