Once upon a time in the distant recesses of garden history, those heady, hopeful, virile days of tilling soil and planting seed, I started 24 mum plants. Each was simply a few inches of snipped chrysanthemum hope, dipped in a little hormone powder (hormones and spring, a natural pair) and plunged into a pot of soil.
Whither these mumlets? What was their fate?
They set up shop in a shady place under some bushes and on top of almighty ivy in our front yard in the Lorelei Herb Garden Annex (LHGA). Shaded from the merciless rays of this summer’s particularly hot sun, and watered regularly and abundantly, they grew and thrived. I neither snipped nor clipped them once (I should have), yet they branched out nicely enough. By mid-July when we went to a family reunion, they had become cute little bushlets, good enough for gifts. I gave several of these new mums away, including to my parents, a symbol of my gratitude, I suppose, for their fortuitous life-creating many, many ages ago. Back home, we gave more away to friends and relatives, gifts that cost me only a few shekels for the soil and the re-used pots, and a summer of watching and waiting.
I kept a trio of the original 24, a nice odd number of now flowering mum plants to brighten the fall display and remind me of inexorable, beautiful life.
Before the last gifting left three for me
