An old dirt farmer

I seem to be mirroring Angry Chicken these days. Yesterday, she posted about making marshamallows, and after years of "planning to" I finally made some this year too. It was easier than I thought it would be, and is quite impressive to friends and loved ones who don't know that a person can actually make marshmallows at home. I find a lot of people think of marshmallows in the same way as, say M&M's, and so they think it's nearly a feat of magic to produce them in your own kitchen.

Today Angry Chicken brought to mind my late mom, Mary Lou, who liked to think of herself as an old Arkansas dirt farmer, even (or maybe especially) after being transplanted to Arizona during the war years (that would be WWII for you younguns). Her father was a farmer who really shouldn't have been one, which is a story for another day, and so she figured to have the farming in her genes. The one thing she never really "got" was house plants. She would try them now and then, usually because someone gave her a growing thing in a pretty indoor pot. For a while she would water and care for whatever was in the pot, until one day there would be a yellow leaf, or a bug, or one of the other many maladies that beset indoor plants. On that day, the plant would be pulled out and dumped in the trash, and the dirt from the pot would be scattered outdoors somewhere. Mom had no patience for house plants that didn't behave, and I think it's because she really believed that plants should be growing outside where they belonged.

I had my own fling with indoor plants during the 70's, when by law, young couples had to have dozens of houseplants hanging from the ceiling in handmade macrame pot hangers. OK, maybe it really wasn't a law, but it might has well have been, as ubiquitous as the things were. I eventually learned that my patience extended no farther than Mom's. Everything was just fine and dandy as long as the plants behaved themselves and stayed lush, but let them take a downward turn and their luck would run out faster than an insurance salesman at a class reunion. I finally asserted my independence over indoor plants and haven't had one in the house for years. I decided that I have a limited facility for caring for living things, and after keeping myself and the husband nearly alive, there was nothing left for a Wandering Jew.