Lime

With spring in the air, I was inspired to plant some flowers a few weeks ago. Because I’m in an apartment, this means I planted them in pots and put some outside and some inside… I went to Lowe’s and picked out several different varieties, came home and decided exactly how I wanted to arrange them. Then I planted them, watered them, and placed each pot in its assigned spot. They are still beautiful, and are thriving. I’m only including this information so that everyone who reads the following does not think I’m completely incompetent when it comes to plants.

My grandmother has the greenest thumb of anyone I’ve ever known. All she has to do is look at a flower that is on its last leg, and it will miraculously spring to life. My mother, on the other hand, seems to have a black thumb, if there is such a thing. Horticulturally handicapped, if you will. Yes, I’m pretty sure I just made that word up since spell check is screaming at me to change it. But I’m not going to because I like it. Anyway, if there is a plant within twenty feet of my mom, it will keel over and die. One time when she was at my house, I spotted one of my plants starting to look very sick indeed, and I think I saw a tiny little white flag being raised. I had to hurry mom out of the house before it was too late. Haha, not really. I just want to make the point that flowers react very differently to my mom than they do to my grandmom. And since I have both of their blood running through my veins, I knew it’d be a toss-up as to which one I’d be like.

A few months ago, I had been up at my parent’s house and was getting ready to leave, when I noticed a sad little pot of ivy sulking in the corner near the front door. If plants could talk, this one would have screamed, “For the love of Gardenia, take me with you!!” So I did. I asked mom if I could take it and try to revive it. She said sure, since she was only going to throw it away anyway. I was determined to bring this thing back to a healthful state. I put it in its own special place in my dining room, and kept a constant vigil of its color, the level of sunlight, and the soil hydration. A day or so later, I decided it’d be a good idea to look online for tips on how to care for ivy, because I had no idea what type of environment, amount of water, etc it needed. So I checked online and found an article with a lot of helpful tips. One tip was that people tend to over-water their ivy, and it gets moldy. Noted. Ivy doesn’t need much sunlight. Got it. Make sure it is in an appropriate container to allow for adequate soil drainage. Check. Then I read the following: “Ivy prefers slightly alkaline soil. If your soil is acidic, add lime.” Aha! Acidic soil! That had to be the culprit.

Now, I’m going to pause here for a moment and explain to those who may not already know – I am a very literal person. Very. Whether it’s a good or bad thing, that’s what I am. So, when I see an article that says “add lime” I’m going to add lime. Well, apparently the person who wrote this article was referring to agricultural lime, which is a compound of calcium and magnesium, used to raise the pH of soil. But when I read lime, my thoughts went straight to the little green fruit.

I needed to go to the grocery store that evening anyway, so I went ahead and picked up two or three limes. I came home from the store, humming “put the lime in the coconut”, and proceeded to squeeze the juice from one of the limes right into the soil where my ivy sat silently screaming. Very pleased with myself and my diligent research and follow through, I sat back knowing the ivy would perk right up within a few days. The next day my mom came over to the apartment, and I very proudly told her the whole story, and explained that I expected to see a rapid transformation within the next few days. To her credit, she managed to keep a straight face during my story. Then she asked me, “When you say you added lime to the soil, what exactly do you mean?” I told her I cut a lime in half, and then squeezed the juice out of it, into the soil. Again, to her credit, she didn’t laugh in my face immediately.

But she has not let me live this one down, and I no longer have any room to talk about the fact that she kills plants. Because I not only kill them, I managed to devise a plan to torture and kill my plant. The ivy actually did start doing okay over the next several days. But then I guess it soaked up so much acid from the lime juice that it took a turn for the worse and deteriorated at an alarmingly rapid rate, then finally croaked.

I’m hoping at least some of my grandmom’s ability was passed along to me, and that the ivy incident was a one-time thing. But I won’t quit my day job, just in case.