My Failures

I'm a bit late posting today. I didn't get up until 7 a.m., so I had a bit of a lie-in, though I was also awake for two hours in the middle of the night so that's probably why. Our mysterious sleep cycles!

I'm now at the point where I could test out of my Covid isolation -- I need two consecutive daily negative tests and then I could rejoin the world. Unfortunately, yesterday's test was still positive and although I haven't tested today I doubt it would be any different. So it looks like I may have to serve my full ten days, through Sunday. I'd also need to be symptom free to "get out of jail," and although I mostly am, I still have a bit of congestion and tiredness.

I spent more time in the garden yesterday, neatening some things up, and taking stock of some of our plants. I'm debating throwing out a few that seem to have lived their best lives.

I seldom talk about my plant failures, but here are three:

You may remember a few years ago I rescued a mostly dead ficus tree discarded in freezing January weather. I cut it back and this is what it looks like now. Not a failure, exactly, but I expected it to grow more upward than outward. It's not a very pretty plant.

Remember the "rescued" prayer plant? Well, I'm putting "rescued" in quotes, because that isn't what's happened at all. The plant looks worse and worse. It put out a new leaf but that quickly died, and the others are slowly turning brown. I think it's toast. I intended to give it until spring, when we have more light and warmth, in the hopes that would coax it to do something else -- but it may go in the trash any day.

Finally -- and I'm really bummed about this one -- there's that crassula that I dug out of the garden, where it was getting mangled by the dog and shaded out by other plants. I put it in this pot on an indoor windowsill and it seemed to do well for a while, with lots of new growth. But then that growth began to shrivel, and I don't know why. I put it back outside, thinking that restoring it to a familiar environment might help, but the jury is out. I put it in well-drained gritty soil with cactus compost, because supposedly it wants dry conditions, but I wonder if it's been too dry. Or too wet. Who knows?

I'm reading "Oh the Glory of It All" by Sean Wilsey, a memoir of growing up in his well-to-do and well-connected but eccentric San Francisco family. I remember when it came out in 2005 and I was struck by the fact that someone several years younger than me was already writing a memoir. I've always meant to read it -- along with "The Tender Bar" by J. R. Moehringer, another memoir that came out around the same time, and that I still haven't read, and that is now a movie on Amazon Prime that I still haven't seen. The Wilsey book is good so far -- I'm about 100 pages in -- but I gotta wonder how his family felt about it. He's not pulling any punches.

(Side note: Every time I see author Sean Wilentz's name in print I get him confused with Sean Wilsey, even though Wilsey is 20 years younger. Neither here nor there.)

(Top photo: A ring-necked parakeet resting in the winter trees above our back garden.)