Yet Another Minor Catastrophe

Exhibit "A"

Here is another example of how sometimes things work and sometimes they just do not.

You will note this pot of coleus and purple wandering Jew marked Exhibit "A". Nice and bushy, yes?

Some weeks back I pinched some sprigs of each from another planter in the garden and stuck them in this umbrella stand in plain soil. They rooted nicely with absolutely no care  and have clearly flourished.

Exhibit "B"

The following week I noticed a pot beside the pond (Exhibit B) where good things were no longer in evidence, so I snatched a few more twigs and stuck them in the dirt. Voila. Nice.

Encouraged, I stole a few cuttings from particularly interesting specimen on the way to Harris Teeter. I stuck these in a little glass vase and they're sitting, dense with roots, on the kitchen windowsill. 

So then I come across a fabulous window box in Georgetown, filled most splendidly with coleus. And upon returning home I noticed a limpishness about my own boxes, and I thought of the pots and how easy it was to root this stuff, so I plucked and I planted and I even dipped the little stemlets in rooting powder to give them a leg up, as it were. I even watered!!


Maybe it was that? The damned attention?

Now you might think this window box (Exhibit "C") looks just dandy. Pretty spectacular, in fact. (Yeah, it does doesn't it. People get whiplash from it). And YET! Look closely and you can see the wandering Jew poking his head out the corner...but where the hell is the coleus. (No it is not under the potato vine). 


Each morning after the planting I'd tiptoe out to pick up the paper and peer into the boxes. Each morning I observed that the little leaflets were growing limper and paler. One day, when my back was turned, they disappeared completely. Just frizzled out...


Such is true in all but ONE box. Mysteriously, the center box on the second floor still has a pale and flaccid leaf or two, though I hold out no hope.


Oh well, be happy with what you've got I philosophize to myself. Pfft.