Brown thumb

There really is a reason why I shouldn't be allowed near growing things.  I either kill them with too much attention, or kill them with too little attention.  It's sad really because I love to grow things.  I'm just not good at it.  Which is kind of amazing considering I have sisters that could grow a rock if they wanted to.  I must have missed out on that gene.

You know those little cacti I've been growing from seeds?  I tried to drown them.  Not intentionally.  I was concerned that they weren't getting enough water because there were so many of them in that plastic pot.  They didn't seem like they were plumping out when I watered them, so I kept watering them more and more.  This week I watered them again on Thursday, and the water rose above the level of the dirt and stayed there!!  Those baby cacti were sitting in a lake!    I realized that the plastic pot had no holes in the bottom, so I bored a few through and the poor thing was still draining water into my sink on Saturday.

Yesterday was so beautiful out that I decided to "potter" around (instead of "putter").  I bought more pots and potting soil and transferred 15 of the cacti in that red plastic pot to three new pots.  I left 13 cacti in their original home.  Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they survive the transplant.  They look okay so far, but some of them didn't seem to have much root . . . or I didn't manage to take the root when I dug them up.  Luckily it seems like cacti are pretty hardy because, as I said, they looked pretty good so far.  I'll see how they do. 

I also discovered that the tall stringy succulents (which I think will grow up to be aloe - kind of hard to tell at this point) have impressive roots.  I transplanted one of those and it's roots almost circled the pot.  I thought I wouldn't get it out without uprooting everything else in the pot, so I know I broke that root somewhat.  So far it seems unfazed by that.

The other re-potting I did yesterday was one of the peach seedlings.  When I was salvaging them from the yard I didn't have enough pots so two of them ended up in the same big pot. They're growing so fast though that I didn't want to leave two of them together. Yesterday I moved one to a separate pot. It looks like it survived that move just fine.

At any rate I keep trying to grow things despite my obvious lack of skill. I really hope the cacti survive. The mini peach orchard is doing extrememly well, but then they aren't counting on me to supply their water needs. So far I've only watered them when I transplanted them. The rest they've gotten from the rain we've been having.

Addy's being very needy this morning.  She's sitting on my lap as I type this and uses her claws to let me know when I need to stop typing and supply strokes for awhile.   Both cat kids were out in the yard while I was potting stuff yesterday.  I also took the opportunity to dead-head the roses . . . or anyway start removing some of the more blown blooms.  That at least allowed that bent branch to raise up off the ground so I won't have to move it to mow today.  There are still a fair number of blooms on the red and the yellow is also blooming well.  I'll have to plant roses at my new place if there are none there.  I love roses.  Of course I'll be planting a mini orchard of peaches too, unless I can give away little peach trees to relatives.