Marigolds. And Petunias.

I feel like writing about marigolds today.

Everybody knows what marigolds are. They come in large medium and small, yeah i know i left out a comma, and in various red orange yellow and gold. S. One year I planted a nice patch of small orange ones in the garden next to the beets. When they were in full bloom, our black cat would stroll through them, (do you prefer semi-colons?) and the black-orange-green made a pretty sight.

There is another kind of marigold that I once planted. They were weaker,  delicate plants and had single flowers, about 1/4" across, and lots of lacy green leaves between the flowers. I like the idea of nice greenery in between flowers, rather than the exaggerated blossoms of recent creation that don't leave any room for leaves.

Speaking of exaggerated, it's crazy what they have done to petunias (let's don't get into those monstrous deformed tulips!). In the beginning they (the petunias) came in limited colors and grew on trailing weedy plants. Then they started making them with deeper colors and more compact plants. Then they had to recover the trailing-ness, without losing the concentration of fat bright flowers.
But if you start with the original old-fashioned petunias, and care for them right, they do quite well. I had one super-petunia plant one time and without a comma I'll tell you how I made it super. I started with one small plant, with light lavendar blossoms (as I found out later, since it wasn't blooming at the time), and planted it early in the spring in rich but heavy clay soil. Maybe without the comma I should say "rich-but-heavy". Or maybe it was "heavy-but-rich." As it grew, I pinched it off every so often, and I mean I really pinched it--not just an inch or two here and there, but a foot at a time. The more I pinched it, [important comma] the more it grew. I ended up with a mound of flowers 6 feet in
diameter! comma or something, with loads of flowers and just the right amount of greenery in between.
I really miss growing things, bad place for a comma, not meaning things that grow, but the activity of trying to get them to grow--and sometimes succeeding. I really miss Indiana--Comma, dot dot dot.