It behooves me to say I don’t like mums. They’re so stiff and formal. Boring, so boring that I don’t get it when folks rush out and lug home pots of them. To me, one mum is one mum too many. A good mum is a dead mum. I never met a mum I liked.
Metro Mart, where I go for groceries (forget organic), has pots and pots and pots of them standing sentinel at the store’s entry point, soon to be joined with those staples of fall, gourds and pumpkins, jars of maple syrup, etc., etc. They drive me wild.
Outside of my condo building are more pots of them, planted, but fated to die, as they are planted in a space (already planted thrice this summer) where nothing grows for long. It’s a space in need of filling with river rocks. Frankly, this fated space is nothing but a big hole waiting for money to fill it, money used to buy the plants, money from the pockets of condo association members. Apparently, I’m the only one bitching. I mean who really cares, but the sellers of the aforementioned mums?
It’s not that I’m against flora, indeed my balcony is filled with whatever survives the winds blowing from Lake Michigan, considerable winds with blossom-shredding capabilities. Geraniums (another staple signaling summer) usually hang tough, but when I drive out of my underground garage parking space, I frequently see half-dead plants left behind by owners who have fled to warmer climes boasting cacti and rattlesnakes. Now and then, a bunch of fake plants gather around the dumpster bins, causing me to slow down and consider if I could use them somewhere. No. Blow wind blow.
When my son and his family exited for Arizona a few weeks back, they asked me to “take care” of their spider plant. “It’s from the 60s,” my son said. “I remember one hanging in a macramé thing in our Brookfield kitchen.” Okay, so now the spidery plant is on my balcony, and I’ve been given instructions to water and nurture more plants on his balcony. Will I be able to keep them alive until son and family return for Thanksgiving? Should I buy gourds and pumpkins this year to welcome them back?
As we speed toward fall in the land of green and gold, I note that my purple moth orchid is dropping blossoms and will soon be a lone stick in a pot. Prior to the purple specimen, I had a glorious white orchid, given to me by Jimmy VonMilwaukee. It thrived for five years, but then, dang, died shortly after I transplanted it.
In closing….of mums I’ll have none.
