I’ve been ignoring my gardenia. That’s not totally truthful but life has come at us fast this last week so it was as good an excuse as any to stop obsessing (ok, ok I can’t stop, but I did tone it down a bit). Things I have discovered while ignoring my gardenia:
- I was definitely watering it too much. Not like, in a way that would kill it, but definitely in a way that might have resulted in buds that seemed like they were going to flower to fall off randomly, inexcusably, for no reason.
- It wasn’t getting enough sunlight. So, I’m pretty sure I killed my first gardenia with too much sunlight when I was trying to save it. What plant doesn’t like western expose in the middle of summer where it gets 8 hours of direct sunlight in the heat of the day?!? (Answer: quite a lot of plants actually.) In my quest to not make the same mistakes again, I think my north facing window was just a little too much on the diffused light side of things. So I’ve been moving it to east facing which is just the right amount of cooler temp but hours of direct sun that I think it needed.
- Goddammit the daily spritzing is working.
My ignoring has been rewarded by a single bud that looks like it might survive the pull of gravity to give me the sweet, sweet smell of a bloom. This hope is just the kind of thing that lures you into a false sense of security so I’ve chosen to expect it to be dead by tomorrow.