Tuesday, June 9, 2020 Historical Hosta

Meet Lois, the hosta with a history. I have to use the female pronoun with her, which I know will pain the more practical among you.

My Grandma Lois was fond of gardening. She died when I was 11, so I was unable to tap into her gardening wisdom by the time I got interested, which wasn’t for another 20+ years.

When we moved to our current house, I discovered the magical properties of hostas. We had an assortment of these around our property and when we needed more, we simply divided some of the ones we had and replanted the halflings elsewhere. One year I didn’t have much time for the re-planting part and the hosta halflings sat in buckets for a few days. No matter – when I finally got them in the ground, they thrived in spite of my abuse and neglect.

So where does Lois come into this meandering tale? About five years ago or so, my cousin Mitch came down for a visit, bearing a garden gift: Lois. It turns out that Mitch’s mother (Lois’s daughter) had taken this hosta from Lois’s yard and now this historical hosta had come to me! I don’t have much in the way of heirlooms passed down, so this was quite a thrill. I found a place for Lois among some of her brethren.

Cue the unhappy music. Sadly, I forgot about her. She was always a bit of a runt and the more muscular hostas around her quickly grew into her space. And then came The Spreading Ferns. Poor Lois was overshadowed, outcompeted for space and seemed destined for obscurity.

But last weekend, we needed more hosta halflings to put around our apple trees. I almost didn’t see her, but a happy Providence intervened. She’s still a runt, but she’s got plenty of room now to grow. Interestingly, we have about 4-5 different kinds of hosta on our property, but only one of this variety. Good old Lois. Cue the happy music.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning after checking on Lois to make sure she’s not being bullied yet by her neighbors.

(By the way, I’ve been putting titles on all my blog posts going back to the beginning of the year and I really, really hope that you don’t get email notifications of that kind of activity because I did a lot of them.)