Not that long ago, I did a post about the indoor propagation I had done with some house plants and a lovely little rosemary plant which had shown good spring growth. The good news is that the house plants and the rosemary plant are doing well. Now for the bad news:

I had put the rosemary plant and the pot with the cuttings (which were showing good signs of growth), outside to acclimatise to our lovely Spring weather. However, that weather included an extremely windy night which turned our back garden into a scene which wouldn’t have been out of place in the ‘Wizard of Oz’ movie. I went out the next morning to assess the damage.

Compared to some, we got off light – garden chairs blown over, fence damaged, the usual sort of thing. I then noticed some of my pots had been blown over as the plants were not heavy enough to hold them down. Then I noticed something was missing…the pot with the rosemary cuttings.

I have checked all round our garden (which isn’t very big) and there is NO SIGN of these little guys anywhere. Not even a trail of compost or the odd cutting to be found lying on the grass or stuck in a fruit tree – nothing. Vanished. Gone.

I admit, my first reaction was not one I am altogether proud of so I’ll skip over that and get to the resilience needed when you are a gardener. Not to be deterred by the latest forecast of snow and ice (for today apparently), I have taken more cuttings from the rosemary plant! The main plant is pushing out new growth as if it’s on a mission to prove it’s worth so I felt it would be rude not to take advantage.

The new cuttings are currently nestled in a margarine tub in the kitchen – the tub is a bright, cheerful yellow which I’m sure will encourage them to grow into happy little plants.

If there is one thing this mini-disaster has reminded me, it’s that gardeners are one group of people who just don’t give up. Even when our plans go completely ‘belly-up’, we keep going. We aren’t afraid to start again albeit after much swearing and stamping of feet, but we keep going. I think it’s a good characteristic to have and is one of the reasons I think everyone should be a gardener – there are many lessons to be learned from the success and failure plant growing gives you and this is something I want to delve into more at a later date.

For the time being, however, I just wanted to remind gardeners and non-gardeners (or future gardeners as I like to call them), whatever happens, whether it’s soil related or not, keep going, keep trying and keep learning. The end result will be worth it I can assure you (and we will keep quiet about the swearing and the foot stomping)!

Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay