Geranium

 

   When I was a kid, my parents had geraniums around the house. The classic red ones that you see if you Google it. I was never very fond of them, I didn't think they were pretty and they smelled bad. I think I learned in chemistry class that the compound responsible for the scent of geranium and the compound responsible for the scent of skunk were very close. As a joke when I came home from college, Dad put a dried geranium in my room telling me it was my favourite flower. I agreed. The only good geranium is a dead one.

   When I bought plants for my parents' deck this year, my dad asked for a geranium. He was wintering my uncle's big geranium plant and wanted one of his own. I learned for the first time that there are two kinds of geraniums, seed and zonal. The seed ones are obviously grown from seed which zonal comes from cuttings from a plant. The zonal ones are larger with larger flowers. Dad was specific, no seed geraniums.

   I thought it was going to be hard to find one, after all when we were at Home Depot, seed is all they had. I went to a nearby greenhouse. I was told that all their geraniums were zonal. They don't sell seed geraniums. It sounded like seed was considered an inferior quality. I found a nice red one and brought it to my Dad. We planted it in a good pot and it looks happy with the other plant they have. 

   When C and I went to buy plants for our garden, I decided I wanted a geranium. The one that I got for my dad was pretty and it didn't stink. That could be because I lost most of my sense of smell a long time ago. 

   I looked at the geraniums and saw there was a great variety of them, There was the classic red and pink ones. There were also different colours of red and pink. There were plants with variegated flowers or leaves. I was wondering what I would choose when around the corner I saw some lavender ones. They were beautiful and what I wanted. I chose one and put it in our cart.

   Yesterday I repotted it into a square cream coloured pot. It looks good, but I may need to repot it again as the pot doesn't have good drainage. For now it is good where it is and I may give a cutting to Dad when it gets bigger. Maybe we can have our own little geranium collection.