What in the world was I thinking?

There’s something about springtime that makes us think we can all have green thumbs.  We catch that whiff of warmness in the air and rush out and buy plants.  Lots of them, apparently.

Sometime in the last month or two, my husband and I decided we needed to order caladiums to plant our yard.  “But how many?” we asked ourselves.  I don’t remember how we came up with a number.

In case you don’t know what a caladium is, it’s those big elephant-ear-looking plants.  They come in white, pink, red, and all sorts of other combinations.  When one of my daughter’s friends was a toddler, she couldn’t say “caladium”, and it always came out “Canadian”.  To this day, we still call them “Canadians”.

Imagine my horror when the box arrived with THREE HUNDRED Canadian bulbs in it. 

I don’t pretend to have a green thumb, but I can follow directions pretty well.  I’ve planted these before, and I don’t remember any other pointers except “don’t plant them too deep” and “keep them watered”.

Well, these instructions said to “de-eye” the bulbs.  It had a picture of a perfectly formed Canadian bulb with a little sprout exactly in the center of one end.  I looked at my bulbs.  They didn’t look like the picture.  They were gnarly and had bumpy things all over the place.  Which ones were eyes?

They said if you de-eyed them, they would be shorter with more leaves.  If you left the eyes on them, they would be taller with fewer leaves.

This is the only time I can remember thinking that short and fat is better than tall and thin.  I studied the bulbs for some time, and finally figured out which things were eyes and which were other things (noses and chins?).

De-eying three hundred Canadian bulbs takes a very long time.  But with resolve, I pressed on.  I finished de-eying, then piled them up and took them outside.  I was determined to at least get the front yard planted that day.

I was midway through my project when it began to get dark.  And it smelled like rain.  Murphy’s Law says that if I waited to plant the rest of them the next day, it would most definitely rain that night, dirt would turn to mud, and I wouldn’t be able to finish.  Then it would rain every day for two weeks, so in the end I would have half my yard with gorgeous Canadians and half with itty bitty ones, or none at all.

I pressed on.  I turned on all the outside lights and got a big flashlight thing and set it beside the spot I was working.  People were driving by pointing and saying, “Look at that crazy lady.  Workin’ in her yard at night?”

I finally finished.  The directions say to water them after you plant them, so I got out the hose.  It still smelled like rain, but Murphy’s Law also says that if you really need it to rain, it won’t.  The only way to MAKE it rain is to water your yard.  Then it will rain for sure.

So I watered.  I set up the sprinkler and sprinkled.  I moved the sprinkler and sprinkled some more.  About ten minutes after I turned off the water, the sky burst open with a torrential rain.

Of course.

I’m hoping that the baby Canadians didn’t drown.  The ones by the mailbox were underwater for several hours.  How long can a Canadian hold it’s breath?

In about a month we will know.  No matter if I say, “All my Canadians died” or “I have hundreds of gorgeous Canadians in my front yard”, you’ll understand.  I won’t have a bunch of bodybuilders at my house.

In any case, I’m hoping that next year I’ll remember that three hundred is a lot of Canadians.