My Thumb is Turning Colors

I have never been good with plants, although I love to grown them and pour my little heart into them. When I get a plant, I research how to take care of it and I meticulously follow directions until it dies. I don't know why. My kids say I have a red thumb (because red is the opposite of green) or a black thumb (because I kill everything). My husband says I must get some sort of twisted kick out of torturing plants. (I don't. I want them to live. I don't know why they don't.)

But this summer I've had great luck with two plants, mostly by just ignoring them entirely.

The first is my hydrangeas. I bought two of them last year, and sent some of the flowers with the kids to flower the cross at Easter. Then, I stuck the plants themselves in my front yard, where they're apparently very happy:


The second plant that is doing amazingly well, considering it was entirely accidental and received no special care, is the hydrangeas' neighbor, and I'm trying to keep them from destroying each other:


Do you know what that is? Do you?! It's a pumpkin. We got pumpkins from St. Martin's Episcopal Church's pumpkin patch last Halloween, and one of them, when it started to get squishy, got buried in my front yard. I didn't think it would actually grow. (The other two got buried in the backyard. I've seen no signs that they decided to sprout.)

I don't know if we'll get any actual pumpkins growing from it, since I'm not sure about our pollinator population, and I'm too lazy to pollinate by hand. I might give it a try as a science experiment for the kiddos, though - that could be fun. Hmmm...

I suppose, anyway, that I should stop worrying so much about my plants and just ignore them. They seem to do better that way.


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