Thrilling, Filling, and Spilling

I have a cast iron tub in my garden. My husband can’t recall where it came from. "I might have bought it at a garage sale." 

You’d think he’d remember. Although he's a a six-foot tall mountain man who slams fifty-pound bags of cement around, I don’t see him absently throwing a two-hundred pound tub over his shoulder. 

Last year I filled it with red and white imaptiens. Easy. Boring.  My garden obsession is an outcome of the pandemic that never seems to end and the fact that I no longer engage much in social media. I also don’t read the news much any more even though the recent article published by the New York Times makes my nerves freeze, “Google Sidelines it’s Engineer Who Claims Its AI is Sentient.” Holy crap. Terminator flashes in my brain and that giant of human, Arnold Schwarzenegger as T2, "I'll be back." 

Ok, back to flowers.  Adventures in flowers in the here and now.

I whizzed by Lowes on the way to visit my favorite garden place, Rolling Gardens. I sought out Heather, a plant wizard, once I arrived. “So, I have this tub out back and was looking for something interesting to fill it with. ” I appealed to her smiling face. 

I know enough about plants that you don't plant shade plants in the sun and Google tells me you don't want to plant marigolds with beans.  Not that I am planting beans anytime soon.  

“Thrilling, filling and spilling," she responded.  

My face scrunched into a frown and I tipped my head. 

“You want something tall and thrilling in the middle.” 

“Oh, I get it now.” 

“And spilling. You want a plant that spills over the the edges of the planter. And filling.  You want plants that will do just that.”

I laughed. She laughed. “Thrilling, filling, and spilling. Got it.”

After a few suggestions I paid for twenty-eight six-inch plants, loaded my bounty into my trunk and drove home.

So much like life, I mused as I dug out a space for three lime green coleus in the center of the soil-filled tub. You want some drama, height, aspirations.  These coleus should do it as they soar to thirty-six inches.  Although I wish I had found Black Dragon Coleus.  Just the name makes me feel dramatic.  Native to Java, it will be a nice backdrop to my spilling plants, the Wishbone Flower, native to Africa.  I live in Maine where the winter temps average 25 degrees.  No wonder these guys are annuals.  I plant so the wishbone will be spilling out over the rim like my cup runneth over.  Last I nestled the cotton-candy pink New Guinea impatiens, who would have been last year's star tub-bloomer, in as filler. Gee, I wonder what country they are native to?  

“Hey, let’s put the old toilet from the renovation next to the fancy flower tub." My husband looked like a Cheshire Cat as he admired my tub full of plants. “You can plant flowers in the bowl too.” 

"No. And that's a hard no." 

I am into filling, thrilling, and spilling in a tub. But not in a toilet. My life used to feel like a toilet and it may again in the future.  But not now.  For now I’ll fill a sturdy cast iron tub with drama plants and wishbone plants spilling over the edge.  I'll snuggle in pretty blossom fillers.  But no reminders of the toilet side of life for me today.