Green Thumb, Brown Thumb

We have a flower garden in our front yard where we’ve tried many and varied flowers over the years. This little garden is bipolar. Some plants do well, and flourish, some plants do poorly and either stay very small or die completely. We haven’t been able to figure out exactly what’s going on, and it’s driven me to the point that I really don’t care anymore.

This first azalea has grown well and is blooming beautifully. But the second azalea, just three feet away, has done very poorly — the little stunted plant doesn’t even bloom. They’re in the same garden, within roots length of each other, getting the same water, the same sun, the same everything. But the difference in them is astonishing, and frustrating.

I’m not a gardener kind of guy. I’m happy with a flat, green yard. But Cowgrit likes flowers around, so we both try to keep the pretties healthy. But for some reason, our plants (from flowers to trees) either do really well — grow big and glorious — or they do very bad — stunted and few leaves.

I can’t even figure out if it’s because of something we’re doing. I mean, if we do the same thing to all the plants, but half of them die and half of them bloom, what can we learn about growing flowers? One hand has a green thumb and the other hand has a brown thumb? I’d restrict myself to tending them just with the green thumb if I could tell which hand it was on.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com