It's the little things

Step back and smell the roses, right?  Or for me, admire the petunias.  The Petty Much Picasso petunia.


Say what?  Ok, I’ll explain.  In the last few years I’ve really gotten in to gardening.  Obsessed, my wife has sometimes said.  Maybe, but I enjoy digging in the dirt.  It’s meditation, it keeps me outside in the fresh air, it helps me with patience.  Patience is a good thing.

I’ve bought plants and created a container garden each year on our deck.  I’ve bought plants to put in the ground.  I’ve started landscaping at both our home and up on the lot.  I’ve gotten on freecycle and picked up plants people were giving away.  I’ve dug up plants in their yards.  I’ve dug up and relocated plants that were in the right of way facing imminent doom due to a DOT project.

Last year somehow I got on a list and subscribed to an email sent out by a grower called Proven Winners.  They supply a lot (and I mean a lot) of nurseries, from Home Depot and Lowe’s to the smaller, upscale local places.  In the emails a woman describes her garden, what is growing, and plugs Proven Winners products.

A month ago, in one of the first ‘welcome spring’ emails she plugged this new petunia Proven Winners had developed, the Petty Much Picasso petunia.  It was gorgeous.  Delicious.  Fabulous.  I lusted after it.  I wanted it.  I began going to Home Depot and to local nurseries looking for it.  I asked the staff about it.  I made note of when their delivery trucks arrived.  I hadn’t started calling to check on its availability, but I was getting close. 

Maybe I am obsessing?

Last Sunday we saw one at a small garden center in Fairview, a real one, live and in person for the first time.  Oh yeah, it was wonderful.  I lusted even more.  It was also quite mature in a hanging basket with a price tag of $25, and I proved that I was not addicted as I walked away. 

I mean, c’mon, it’s a plant; it grows.  Especially petunias.  But I still wanted it.

Now I knew it was available in at least one store locally.  Yesterday I saw it in another.  I felt like I was at a strip club; what a tease!  It was also in a hanging basket, again for $25.  Arg!  Where are the 4 inch pots?  “They sell out as fast as they come in,” one of the staff told me.  Grrrrr.

Well, one day last week at lunch Diane and I drove to Southern States where I picked up three bags of potting soil as this weekend is the big container garden planting.  (For those of you who have seen my deck in years past, don’t worry, I already had six more bags at home.  I’d rather have too much than not enough.)  We then drove to the nursery at the farmer’s market.  We looked at some of the plants outside, and then went in the greenhouse.

I found a blue verbena on my list, and also a rose veined petunia.  I grabbed a spikey upright purple/red coleus-like plant (can’t recall what it was) to use as a “thriller” in the back of a pot.  I was looking at some other plants on a table when I saw them, two of them, two four inch pots of Petty Much Picasso petunia.

Woo hoo!  I was thrilled.  I was happy.  I was ecstatic!  I grabbed one.  “You’re not getting both?” Di asked.  No, for one I really only want one, and second, there may be someone else out there who is as obsessed (did I say that?) as me about finding it, and think how happy they will be when they find the LAST one.

That made my day; finding a plant I was looking for.  Like I said in the subject line, it’s the little things.  It’s the little things that make us happy, that keep us smiling, that help us get through this life one day at a time.  For me, today it was about finding a pretty flower.

Doug

PS  Yesterday I saw six more four inch pots at Reems Creek.

PPS  Here's a link to some photos: