I am over-run with books right now. And I have not, regrettably not, finished Spring Cleaning. That’s essential. That and the list for Daughter C.

But Daughter C has caught the gardening bug. And so I am thinking about the garden, and trying to supplement Daughter C’s reading with some experience.

Here we go.

Miss M gave me– as in paid for, or maybe, come to think of it, I might have paid for them, anyway– . I have two small grandiflora gardenias. They are the backbone of a larger front door landscaping plan. Though we took pains to tend to them, they were turning yellow. (I can do that. Change tenses like that. There’s a term and there’s a book for that.)

Here’s how much we care about those gardenias– Daughter C surrounded them with some fragments of the brick planters that were busted out when they put in the French drain so that those two bedrooms wouldn’t flood anymore.

I pride myself on thinking though what the problem was.

Gardenias are acid-loving. Brick planters are made with bricks and mortar. Mortar is lime-based. Mortar is soluble.

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Mind you, I didn’t come to this in a flash. I first did two different kinds of “acid-loving-plant” fertilizers. One responded better than the other.

Two different fertilizers. How do they differ?

What are the pathways… .

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Over the years The Girls have given me all manner of potentially useful and yet very inexpensive things relating to the garden. One was a packet of three little tubes and flakes of something that sort of made sense, pH-wise. The brighter green, the more alkaline or something.

I will be danged.

So I started piling coffee grounds around them and got some soil acidifier and we mulched with pine bark.

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Today I was in Tractor Supply and it hit me to ask if they had a soil pH tester. The woman at TSC was more knowledgeable about soil pH testers than the woman at Walmart, though she did try to help. She even asked another W-M associate.

I would not be opposed to a movement that favored establishments which placed a premium on excellent customer service at a reasonable price.

That’s a slogan I said. You CANNOT use it.

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I was looking forward to Great American.

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Anyway, they had a regulation soil pH tester WITH BONUS NUTRIENT TESTER for a mere $20. The ones I saw on Amazon started at like $40.

And sure enough… .

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I mixed up a couple of gallons of soil acidifier plus iron or something.

And thus concludes “A Gardening Post.”

I think every women should have a serious come to Jesus moment with some sort of textile based thing, something related to food, and to her own garden.