They LIVE!!!!

I am a notorious plant killer. I have received many gifts of plants in my lifetime and I have only kept one, a spider plant (they are nearly impossible to kill) alive more than a week or two - maybe three if I'm really lucky. I was so thrilled, I named him Bob and when he began to look sickly, I gave him to my green-thumbed oldest brother. He lived a long life there, though I had him for the first 2 years of his life in a giant pot. My house has no greenery in it that is real. Okay, you might say, Why not water your plants regularly? Or you could actually read up on how to keep living plants alive. Yeah, what's your point?

This summer I decided to turn over a new leaf. I got on the internet and looked up container tomatoes. I went to Wal-mart (where else?) and bought two of them with those metal, circular, level thingies (like a round stake?) and some potting soil and tomato plant food. I planted them and put them on the back porch. I water them every other day (unless they look really moist). I fed them plant food when it says to. I spritz them when they look a little limp after a hot day. I sprayed them with bug spray for tomato plants when a couple of leaves had been chewed on. I check on them every day. One day I walked out to see if there were any weeds or dead leaves from the tree in them and......Shock! Amazement! I had 3 little green tomatoes!!!!! Now I have 6 or 7 more. They are growing! I'm actually growing tomatoes!!!! Which, by the way, I LOVE to eat when they are fresh from the garden. A little mozzarella cheese and olive oil with them and mmmmm, mmmmmm good.

So apparently, whatever forces make us keepers of growing green things looked at me recently and said, "Hmmm, she's kept the hubby and kid alive. The dog and both the cats are still hangin' in there. Maybe she CAN keep a plant alive!" Whatever it was, so far so good. I can hardly wait for those tomatoes to turn big and red.

And this miracle spread - sort of. I got a geranium as a gift from the 3rd grade teachers at the end of the year and although the blooms all died, the plant is still alive and kicking on my front porch. Okay, maybe the blooms died because I didn't water it for the first week. Then a friend brought by a flowering bowl and it's still alive there, too. I think I may have reached a new plane of understand and become a giver of life rather than of death for green things. Yeah, Baby! They LIVE!