Ten Minute Gardening

After many years of avoiding African violets (long story), I have found myself once again being lured by their lovely little flowers and fuzzy leaves. There are only four African violets in the plant stand, but I can easily see many more creeping into the house before long. Hopefully they won’t number the violets I had long ago. That was perhaps a bit too many (but is there really such a thing as too many?).

Why are African violets making a comeback in our house? Here’s part of the long story.

My previous dog, (and very best friend) Eb, loved African violets so much, he could often be found attempting to lie amongst them. Cute, right? Well, not so cute. While romping in the collection of violets, he often he’d work up an appetite. You guessed it! He ate the violets. Maybe they were like gourmet food to him, I don’t know. All the scoldings in the world, did not prevent him from snacking on violets the minute my back was turned. Moving them out of his reach failed as Eb learned he could climb on the furniture to get to them. If he had to knock over a few things to get to the violets, so be it! He would! He just wanted those violets so badly, nothing would deter him! Out of sheer frustration, I abandoned African violet collecting.

Now we have another dog, Misha and he does not eat houseplants. So far. We’ll see what happens when he gets a sniff of the African violets.