I have a Black Thumb but one plant I can manage to keep alive (knock on wood) is Impatiens.

Sometime in the last 30 years or so, The Commander bought some big pots and every year when they moved out to the moomincabin, she would stuff a whole bunch of Impatiens in them. The forest here is beautiful but there is a lot of green and Impatiens provide a little bit of color contrast.

I can’t exactly remember when I started copying The Comm on The Planet Ann Arbor but potting Impatiens in big pots started being a Mother’s Day Thing for me. Originally me and the GG would go and get the flowers but then when Lizard Breath moved back from Callyforny she started the Mother’s Day “tradition” of bringing me Impatiens from the Eastern Market in Detroit. As klutzy as I am with gardening-type stuff, I insist upon potting them myself although I will accept the GG’s help in getting soil ready.

The GG helped The Commander pot her flowers the last spring she was alive and we have continued her tradition since then, except for one year when we did not get up here at the right time and couldn’t find Impatiens. It can be a challenge to pot flowers of any sort at this time of the year in the yooperland. A few years ago, I was absolutely freezing while potting them and had to pull them inside for the night as the temperatures were expected to dip into the upper 20s or whatever overnight. This year? Not so much. It was so dern hot on the beach this afternoon that we retreated to the moomincabin deck for the duration of the late afternoon. I am here to report that (knock on wood) there are NO MO-SKEE-TOES! Loverly breeze outta the southeast.

The title? Well. All I will say is that the GG and npJane have been immersed in terlet-type discussions for the last week or so, beginning down on The Planet Ann Arbor. The main question is “When is the last time *your* septic tank got pumped out?” The answer is either “I don’t know” or “never”. I’ll let y’all figger out whose answer is which. We now know the geography of *where* our septic tanks are. I was of no help. My memories of putting in the septic tank involve workers knocking over the outhouse and filling in the hole and The Commander yelling at them, “We still have to use that”, me cowering in the moomincabin in my bikini hoping I didn’t know any of the workers, and the outhouse ROCKING after they clumsily dug a new hole and set it back up.

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