Behind the Ironic Column

My gardening abilities have taken a serious beating this summer.  I usually manage to have at least halfway decent plants on my balcony – even though the new balcony is much less plant friendly than the old one.  As soon as I moved here, things started to die or become infected with some bug or another.  But I thought we were past that.

Anyway, this summer in Portland has been cooler and damper than usual as everyone who expected warmer and drier will attest.  So plant pots that needed water every day last summer barely seemed to need it once a week this year.  Which adds up to my justification of why I completely drowned two plants that sit at the top of my “plant ladder.”   I can’t see into the pots from below and can only touch the soil by standing on tiptoe or getting the stepstool.  So I’d been blithely watering them with the extended watering wand and not paying attention to the fact that they were sodden.  End result – dead plants.  

Then my basil plant became infected with some bug that I don’t recognize – and I do have experience with most of them.  I usually have great luck with basil (but it does prefer those warmer temperatures as well) so this is an aggravation.  And one of the plants that was doing relatively well turned over and fell on one of the others that was already sulking.   All in all, not a good summer. 

After I drowned the plants on top of the ladder, I took that pot down and set it on the balcony floor where I could see it and where the sun would hit it more directly (when there was sun) and dry it out.   That’s been going on for weeks now (I was out of town for a while and just left it) and it finally did dry out.  However, there are now a good two dozen little plants – all apparently the same thing – sprouted in that pot.  They are definitely not the plant that died – and I don’t recognize them as being anything else I wanted to grow. 

I’m torn between just tossing the whole thing out and starting over or letting these plants grow to see what they become.   Perhaps there were some seeds floating through the air that happened to land on my balcony – I have acquired tree seedlings that way.  The only other plants I had on the balcony  that randomly self seed are marigolds – and these are definitely not marigold plants.   Or perhaps I’ve completely taken leave of my senses and planted something without recording or remembering it.  I tend to doubt that – if I’d planted it deliberately it should be something I can identify.   

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