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I remember a time when I was rather proud of the disdain in which I held the art of small talk. I mean, it was quite a while ago, and I think when we’re young we’re allowed – expected, even – to entertain some fairly stupid opinions (this is something we’re supposed to grow out of as wisdom descends upon our shoulders with increasing age, though looking around I’m beginning to think this is a myth). Anyway, small talk was pants, thank you very much; let’s dive straight into the deep stuff. Of course, now I see that it was bluster – I wasn’t any good at small talk, and I didn’t see its point, but now (older and wiser, see? ...what?) its value as a tool for getting to know new people or putting a room full of recently arrived guests at their ease is something I’ve come to rely on in certain social situations. And so while once I’d have looked down my nose at that most anodyne of responses, “what are you like?”, stripped of its rhetorical colours, it becomes a particularly enlightening enquiry; in the context of a coaching session, one of the key questions used to inform a process and relationship which we hope will bear fruit and, when directed inwards at ourselves, no less illuminating. Particularly so, I’m bound to find, when it comes to gardening.
Blimey, that was a preamble and a half. Still here? Good.
I’ve noticed that my pellies are in peril. I’ve come to know the signs, and this is quite an achievement since, outwardly at least, the appears to be little to cause concern. In fact, they’re looking quite perky, sat on one of the few window ledges in the house, on the right side of the glass, gazing smugly through the window at the one I’ve forgotten to bring inside from the patio table. Oops.
The thing is, pelargoniums are not big fans of winter, and certainly not in my house. Best practice is to bring them inside in early October, cut them back hard, and allow them gradually to leaf up again so that by springtime they’re in fine fettle and needing nothing more than a freshening up of their compost and a rousing team talk before being sent back out into the mild open air. I rarely cut them back when I should, preferring the company of their foliage through the darker months, and they do quite well as long as they’re not too troubled by central heating, which can dry them out in a jiffy, especially when in full leaf. They’ll make it through to mid January, even putting on new growth as the daylight lengthens, at which sign I’ll congratulate myself on my prowess at overwintering these tender dainties. And this point – the point which, if the readings on my internal SmugOmeter are to be believed, we’ve reached today – is right about when they turn up their feet and cark it. Something shifts – it’s probably the new leaves and the strain that puts on the system, by which I mean not just the plant but the medium it’s growing in – and I fail to up my game, thinking that it’s just a matter of carrying on the same way, a dribble of water every few days, until March. It’s not. The watering regime needs to be kicked up a notch, and it wouldn’t be crazy to start dribbling a little seaweed into the can around now, though I’m probably still not going to change the compost for another few weeks. I could even start to take the cuttings I didn’t last autumn, which will give me more compact and bushy plants altogether (though the attraction of a leggie pellie, or a gangleonium, as
has it, should never be overlooked), while reducing the amount of moisture lost through the leaves. In short, though it’s still clearly winter and not yet spring, for the pelargoniums it’s something quite different and in between, and I need to act accordingly.Of course, I don’t. I sit down at my keyboard, and write this to you, instead. What are you like, O’Brien?
I bring in too many too late and never whack them back enough. When I get around to watering them, which happens less and less often as the winter goes on, I also deadhead the occasional flower and spritz the leaves with very diluted fertilizer. Somehow, they mostly soldier on and manage to make it back outside sometime in May. So I guess I'm lazy and lucky.
Oh the spritz is a fine idea. Much more sensible than my smug inertia!