Plants, Plants and More Plants

Our garden flag out front announces it's fall, although we have yet to see many colored leaves on either the oak or the maple. This weekend was supposed to be peak color in eastern Missouri, but our trees are playing hard to get. A low close to freezing this coming Sunday night may change all that. These lovely golden mums are volunteers, or survivors, that came back up from some we planted in the front bed last year.




These geraniums are also survivors, and unfortu- nately they don't realize that frost is coming one of these nights. Or fortunately, since we get to continue to enjoy their flowers. These plants are two or three years old and over-wintered upstairs last year. There isn't room for them to come inside, since they have become so leggy. I took cuttings of each color and I hope they will root. The last few days have been busy: where once we had 4 pots of amaryllis, now we have 11 or 12 after I divided them. One mother-in-law tongue became three. As for the spider plants, I despair. I have one of them inside now, on a stand. The others I'll take cuttings from since they root easily. But unless you would like to adopt one... this sounds like those desperate pleas from the humane society to adopt a pet before its time is up.

By today, all of the plants (well, most of them... there are a couple more I have to do tomorrow) are inside. The photo below shows the menagerie in the dining room, gathered round the radiator. I wish the window didn't have the radiator, since the dry heat is hard on the plants, but they need the light, and it's the best we have on the first floor, even if it is a northern exposure. And yes, the three well-lighted windows upstairs, (two south, one north) are full of cuttings and transplants as well.

Finally, today we turned on the heat. It had gotten down to a steady 63 in the house and the rest of the week is forecast for rain, showers, nighttime lows flirting with the 30s. And with Ava gone back home, we lost our extra blanket. Radiators are wonderful. Thank God we have the means to turn the heat on. It's a toasty 68 -70, depending on the room, in here now.