Neglect: My Green Thumb Secret Weapon

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Some of my new subscribers may not be aware, but I am the Angel of Death for plants. Even the so-called hardiest of plants (think “tough to kill” descriptions) are no match for my brown thumb. Take, for example, the seeds I’d planted for fresh basil in our kitchen. They grew, they showed promise, they died. They clearly needed more help than my absent-minded watering. And yes, for you new readers, that’s a keg in the background of that picture. My boyfriend is in beer (occupationally, not swimming), and I think kegs make great sawhorses for painting things like doors.

But I digress. Recent revelations suggest that my struggle to keep plants alive may not be as difficult as once thought. Apparently, all I have to do is completely 100% neglect my plants and they will do just fine without me.

I’m still discovering a lot about my home, but one of the first things I noticed last year was the blossoming daylilies in the front garden area. I had always intended on moving them after the end of summer, but we got a little distracted with interior changes and didn’t try as hard to keep these alive as I would have liked.

In fact, we actually dug up every single one and placed them on the pallet Scott brought home one day with the full expectation that we would move them to the back yard fence. And then, somehow, we instead did nothing.

I mean literally nothing. We just left the perfectly healthy plants, exposed roots and all, lying on the pallet on the side of the house without replanting them. Meanwhile, we replaced the garden area with purple pansies and cabbage in prep for fall and winter.

During the winter, I’d assumed they died this way. Neglected, abandoned, a lost cause (or rather, a cause I never cared anything about), covered in snow and without soil to protect their roots. When the snow and cold weather graciously went on vacation on Sunday (yay for spring weather!), Scott and I began our spring yard work in the hopes that this year would be the year for external changes.

But then, I saw… green. As in, these plants were growing… roots exposed… on top of the pallet.

If there ever was an argument to completely neglect my plants from now on, I’d say this is it. But since Georgia summers can get quite hot, I decided the next best thing to completely neglecting them (and also cleaning up the general white trash look of the side of the house) was to take all twelve budding plants and give them a new home. Right under and next to the camellia bush-trees in the front yard.

Hey, they made it through the winter without dying on me, so the least I could do for them at this point is to give them their soil back, right?