If life were like that…I’d have a green thumb. Like my Mom or my Dad for that matter. Or my Brother. My father-in-Law, or countless other relatives. But I don’t. That doesn’t stop me from loving flowers and other green things. With spring here, hopefully to stay, my mind wanders to what I’ll plant in pots and flowerbeds. My lack of a colored thumb necessitates keeping things simple. I have my favorites: petunias, pansies, and impatients. Hardy little souls, they provide lots of color.

I love visiting the greenhouses and wandering colorful aisle after colorful aisle. The colors! Begonias and tons of others I don’t know the names of. Geraniums, that always make me think of Anne of Green Gables and her little plant she named Bonny.

“What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill, please?”

“That’s the apple-scented geranium.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave it yourself. Didn’t you give it a name? May I give it one then? May I call it–let me see–Bonny would do–may I call it Bonny while I’m here? Oh, do let me!”

“Goodness, I don’t care. But where on earth is the sense of naming a geranium?”

“Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course, it won’t always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can’t one?”  from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

As spring blooms around us, does your thumb turn green while your mind starts planning various groups of plantings? What are you favorite sort of flowers?