Keeping the Flowers and Fruit Coming

    We have a large, lovely tangerine tree that has gone from producing bountiful orange fruit to fruit with black sticky insect residue on them. So a few weeks ago I attended a seminar on Citrus Care. I came away excited with what I'd learned about pruning and fertilizing citrus trees.

    Since then I've spent several hours pruning the tree and arranged to have it sprayed with pesticidal oil, applying part of what I learned at the seminar. I also heard how spraying frequently with liquid fertilizer  keeps the tree healthy. Have I done that yet? No. Nor have I bought the siphon sprayer or the liquid fertilizer needed.

  Saturday I distributed fertilizer granules on the ground under the hydrangea, lilies and other backyard plants. I couldn't procrastinate doing this application any longer since soon my gardener and his guys would apply mulch.  I could have, should have fertilized in April, or at least May. It took me until three weeks ago to buy the fertilizer. Here it is July and I do what should have been done at the start of the growing season.

    It's a motivational problem. Applying fertilizer is so unspectacular and flowers lure me. I love pulling off dead lily buds and leaving the open-wide yellow lilies to shine without brown, shriveled lilies marring their glory of the blooms. I enjoy snapping off long brown stalks projecting from the geranium bush with their once-cherry blossoms curled up or fallen. The bush looks a happy-pink afterwards.

    What do I get from doing fertilizing?  Nothing--I just see a lot of dull, gray tiny balls on the ground. I know it will help the plant grow and produce more flowers, but it doesn't happen within my sight, or even overnight. I'm impatient -- I like immediate results, like what pruning and dead heading brings. But long term, without the right feeding, the lilies stop putting out green stalks with blooms or tree or plant may become diseased.

    Today, on Sunday, I've determined that I'm going to keep in mind the long-term view for not only my plants but myself. I want to invest time in food for my soul.

    When I don't have to get a meal on the table, write a paper or other tasks, my mind goes to how I can be of help to someone else. Sounds good, but the danger is that without receiving fertilizer for my soul, I'll be infested long-term and what fruit I produce may not be sweet or wholesome.

    So today I'm going to take an hour to pray and read my new Christianity Today magazine, and Pilgrim and Tinker Creek--a fertilizer for my soul.

   

Comments

[Debby]

I like your comments on fertilizing - the long term goal verses the immediate. I need to ponder on this more. Was thinking about you recently.