Green Acre: Window Boxes in a Funk

Persimmon-colored pyracantha berries and some cushion mums from Trader Joe’s hold the fort, in this case the window box, until it gets its festive holiday trimmings. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

IF YOU’RE reading this today, may I ask why? If I were you, I’d be sitting in a funk that I’m pretty sure is permanent. Think about gardening? Surely you jest. 

However! Needs must a column be produced, and here it is. 

When we left me last week, I’d just come home from a relaxing week in the hospital, recovering from a surprise bout of pneumonia, which immediately followed a superb annual physical. Really first-rate. Surprise!

I’d also just received my shipment of tulip bulbs, which I’m still staring at. 

And, it seemed, between heat, lack of rain, and neglect, my newly replanted window boxes were in dismal shape. We have five boxes, two in the main-level windows and three across the top. These are up all year and change with the seasons; each with a planting area on either side of a dwarf fir, and a drape of ivy in each corner. 

Just days before my hospital sojourn, the dusty burgundy-and-pink caladium that spent the summer flanking the firs were pulled and their  bulbs buried in sawdust for the winter. These were replaced with pansies, which looked quite cheerful. 

On my return, the pansies had flumpshed irretrievably*, leaving nothing but naked earth with a few sad frizzles of leaves.

So here we (meaning me) are, gliding toward the holidays, which always require a Grand Window Box Renovation involving big purple satin bows, fir boughs, glittery stems, lights, and shiny things. Even if I could find a pansy now, there’d scarcely be a point in buying them, just to replace them in short order. We’ll leave those for spring.

Thankfully, Trader Joe’s brilliantly filled the gap with persimmon-colored pyracantha berries, fistfuls of greens, and sprigs of itty-bitty purple cushion mums. None have roots, all are just jabbed into the soil; if the weather stays chilly and the boxes are kept watered, the display should take us well past Thanksgiving Day.

If the greens grow dull, there’s always spray paint. 

I return to staring at the sack of bulbs. If I wait long enough, perhaps someone will lend a planting hand. 

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Budgie news? All quiet on that front. Only one egg in the coconut, which Cooper carefully tends. 

We wait. 

*Or is that irretrievably flumpshed? You might be surprised at how long I pondered this. Flumpshed, by the way, is pronounced as one syllable and is not  a word. But it should be.