The Optimism of Springtime Plants

These guys had a rough trip to my house!

Oh, heck.  Back in January, I got an email from Wayside Gardens about ordering spring flowers. It was an icy evening, and the light from outside was filtering cobalt blue through the windows, and there was snow swirling in the air.  

I thought I might as well order flowers for Spring.  This is sort of a ritual, with me.  The email from Wayside comes in January, with a nice, big, fat limited-time discount, and I order flowers to be planted in my containers, knowing they won't ship until May, when the weather becomes more temperate.  Everybody knows the weather becomes more temperate in May!  (HA!)  Then I slide the flower order to the back of my mind, and when the boxes of live flowers do finally show up in the Spring, it's like a little surprise that Past Me has sent to Present Me.  

What a delight!

Last year caught me off-guard.  I didn't jump on the Wayside email.  I think I was having a particularly petulant winter in 2018-2019.  Well, pissy, if you want to put a very fine point on things.  It was a combination of lingering illness and dithering over what to do about the plane and tying myself up in knots about what it meant to keep it and what it would mean if I sold it and let go of that part of my life for now.  I wasn't in a good place mentally in that winter, and the thought of planting flowers in the Spring was just too, too much optimism.  So I ended up waiting until June, after School was out, after all the more local nurseries had already had their flower-clear-out sales, and looking with dismay at my empty whiskey-barrel planters on the deck.  Zoe and I made a run up to Hornell Lowes and selected the best-looking overgrown and dried-out-looking Zinnias and pincushion flowers from their picked-over garden center.  It was touch-and-go for those flowers for a few weeks, but as Summer 2019 wore on, they thrived.  

Petunias do really well up here.  They've never been my favorite flowers.  I think I'm biased against them because they're everywhere.  But after a few years of planting flowers and noticing that the petunias take off like weeds, pretty much, they're my go-to, when I plan ahead.  I understand why they're everywhere.  They stand up to hot sun, and to the abuse of not being watered super-regularly.  They grow lots of colorful, trumpet-shaped flowers.  

So I jumped on the January Wayside email this year, before we knew that if 2019 was a ride on the Crazy Mouse, 2020 was going to be a ride on the Rabid Rat.  I mean, really.  It felt optimistic enough, ordering flowers for Spring when the air outside was cobalt blue and swirling with big white snowflakes.  Once 2020 really started to shape up, I'd think of those flowers I ordered and think about how nice it would be in May, when everything was back to some semblance of Normal.  It'd be a new beginning, planting those little baby petunias in my whiskey barrel planters, and we'd get to salvage the rest of 2020 and all this Pandemic Purgatory would be just a story we tell!

Wrong again.

I'd forgotten about the flowers by yesterday, honestly.  I got the School-Reach call and saw pictures of the flowers PTO sold as a fund-raiser.  I didn't know about the flower sale until well after I'd already loaded up on Wayside Petunias.  Those PTO flowers looked beautiful, and I was kicking myself for not ordering any, and I couldn't remember why it was that I hadn't ordered any.  Then my Wayside boxes showed up.

I'll tell you what.  As I unboxed those poor petunias, all I could think was that their condition was the most appropriate depiction of 2020 that I've seen yet, I think.

They were too big for their pots and root-bound.  Confined for too long in a small space.  Their leaves were pale and wilting.  Their stems were on the floppy side. They looked like they could use a good drink.

I expect mail-order plants to look less than spectacular upon arrival, but for these, I was Concerned as I carefully unwrapped them.  Even Sylvie, who usually brutalizes any plants that are in her way came over to where I was sitting on the floor.  She took a sniff, (I held my breath, waiting to see those teeth of hers bare), and she looked at me as if to say "They might be hopeless," then off she trotted.

But there's something about plants in Springtime that inspires even the smallest optimism, even when those plants have had a rough trip.  Even when we're supposed to get snow this weekend, and can't get those flowers in their final destinations.  

I stood those petunias in their too-petite pots up in my dishpans, and watered them with the kitchen-sink sprayer.  They rested in the sink overnight, and were looking a little more lively by morning.  Now they're hanging out in front of the French doors to get some warmth and sunlight while we wait out the weather.  

For the petunias, it's just a few more days of lockdown in too-small pots before they can get outside and live their normal lives.  

It's comforting, in a way, to see that things like dandelions and petunias and the rise and set of the sun go on, just the same.  

I have a feeling that once these travel-weary petunias get into their new digs, they'll green up and perk up and put on a spectacular show all summer long.  And that's the payoff of the optimism of springtime plants, Friends.