nature lover

mb must have been a gardener in another life.

this past weekend we took a coworker's suggestion and drove out to sunny beecher, illinois to a huge nursery with reasonable prices on plants, and had fun stocking our porch herb garden. i thought mb was just along for the ride and the ice cream stand outside the nursery, but to my surprise he got into the whole plant ownership idea, picking out a hanging plant for the bedroom and a pretty purple-leaved tropical plant for the porch. (i know, i should call it "handsome" or "manly" or something, not "pretty," since this is a story about men buying plants.)

i shouldn't have been so taken aback by the sequence of events that followed, considering the whole terri schiavo-like drama when he accused me of not taking my parsley's life seriously enough when i wanted to stop watering my already-dead indoor plants this winter and put them on the porch to freeze. but every day after work he goes to the porch and gazes at our little plants, sighing "they grow up so fast..." when i got home from a night shift this week, i walked in to find the purple plant in the living room, because mb didn't think it was strong enough to handle the 40-50 degree cold. last night he announced that he thought mr. purple should sleep in the bedroom. i know he meant at the window next to our hanging plant, but i couldn't help the mental image of mb, plant, and me all curled up in bed.

so this morning i walked out to the porch to find that the rosemary, which was planted in a window box along with the sage and thyme (i know, very scarborough fair, although the parsley is separate), is missing. there's a hole where the rosemary used to live. i can only conclude that the rosemary got tired of mb picking favorites and left for a porch where it can be more appreciated. (i'm sure it has nothing to do with the birds trying to eat the scrawniest plants, like they did last year.) maybe i should try to give all of our plants porn names like mr. purple, although it can't be easy to find a sexually suggestive name for garlic chives.