A brief post of apology and rebuke. Mostly apology. But a little rebuke.
We don’t buy garden plants, usually. For the last few years, we’ve been starting our own tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds. We use heirloom variety seeds too. As most gardeners do, we always plant a few extra seeds, in case of dud seeds.
The problem is that usually most or all of the seeds sprout and flourish, so we end up with more seedlings than we need. Because really, we don’t have space for more than 9 tomato plants and three pepper plants.
Since we have this surplus, we usually, and you might have seen this if you follow me on Twitter, which you should be doing (see the link at the right), try to sell the surplus. However, we also give away a lot of them, because we have this policy that we don’t do business with members of our local church congregation. We will do things for trade, or happily do and receive service, but no money exchanges hands if a person from our church congregation or family wants plants. In fact, if you are a friend, I won’t take your money.
It is a policy which serves us well. We are happy to give away plants because, hey, spread the love.
But during the selling period, I set up a small, tough table out in the sunny front yard and place the plants out there all day. Now, I also set OUR plants out there– the ones we plan to keep and put in OUR garden. This is usually not a problem.
In addition to all of this, I set up a sign in front of the house advertising heirloom garden plants for sale. We can usually recoup the cost of our seeds.
How it usually works is that if someone wants plants, they come to the door, or find me working out front and inquire about the plants. I give care and planting instructions and send off my little babies into the wide world.
But yesterday, the table was set out like usual, all the plants with a pretty clear label on them– except for a volunteer tomato plant that came up with a pepper plant. Each plant was in its own container as well.
So we spent the day working outside (by ‘we’ I mean ‘I’), after sleeping in quite a lot. Then we went to the cemetery as is our custom. Then we came home, had burgers etc and roasted marshmallows.
After cleaning things up and getting kids to bed, I went out front to bring the plants in for the night and found $3 tucked under the spider plant pot. Did I mention I also sell young house plants? I do.
And the volunteer tomato plant was gone, as was one of OUR eggplant starts.
So to the person who saw the sign advertising HEIRLOOM PEPPER PLANTS, and who gave us $3 for the two plants, you paid the right amount, but you didn’t get the right plants! Those are going to be some odd looking peppers, my friend.
My apology is that you got the wrong plants. My rebuke is that you should have knocked harder, rung the doorbell louder, or followed the voices to the back yard. Then you wouldn’t have ended up with MY plant and a volunteer tomato plant of unknown species.
Good luck with those peppers.
Also, we still have three pepper plants available, as well as a nice starting spider plant in a good pot. I will have more spider plants available in a few weeks, as well as at least one philodendron.
Wouldn’t you like to come and get one?