Reviving a geranium: From a discarded plant to thriving bloom – Wyn Drabble

The new geraniums are now flourishing so, as I’m no spring chicken, I’m setting my sights on using the same powers on myself when I reach the end, writes Wyn Drabble. Photo / 123RF

I’m very proud of myself because I have brought what was once a living thing back from the dead. It’s definitely a first for me.

I’m reasonably certain most of us will have an animal rescue story to tell. From people with kind hearts, there will be plenty of abandoned cat or dog stories, usually prefaced by a visit to the vet to have it checked over.

I’ve even wrapped one of our feathered friends in a cosy towel and taken it to the vet to see if there was any hope.

Mrs D befriends spiders. She will talk to spiders daily and she alerts anyone else in the house not to clean away or tidy up the web it has intricately woven in order to survive. To destroy such painstaking work would be tantamount to cruelty.

It’s normal behaviour in our house to assist insects who need to be returned to the natural environment, especially crawly ones that get trapped in the kitchen sink and cannot manage to scale the steep and slippery sides.

And a mouse, captured and released to somewhere more natural and appropriate, came straight back. I’m sure it was because it preferred domestic comfort. “I’d be mad to leave there!” was probably its rodent response.

There is even a tortoise in Brazil which lost about 85% of its protective shell in a wildfire. A group of Sao Paulo vets 3D-printed a new shell, fitted it then painted it to make it like the original. The same vets have also used the 3D technology to create new beaks for parrots, macaws and geese.

After that, my story might sound a little lame but I’m still very proud of it. What I saved – and I believe actually brought back from the dead – was a geranium. It might help to know I even have a plant hospital. It’s like a real hospital in that it is understaffed and parking spaces are hard to find, but in it I put plants that are unwell and I fix them up.

If they are in the big garden rather than a pot, I carefully dig them up and put them in a large pot with premium potting mix and I serve them top-tier hospital meals. The recovery rate is extremely pleasing.

For about a week, I passed geraniums while walking Madam Dog. There were two still-labelled geraniums from a nursery, discarded among some agapanthus plants. One was a definite goner but the other did not seem to deteriorate over the week, despite the fact it was not embedded in any soil or source of sustenance. Nor did it show any signs of new growth.

After the week, I answered the nagging voice in my head and took it home to save. I took three cleanly incised cuttings from it and put them in a small glass of water. After about a week, tiny green and white variegated leaves appeared from the top of each and, after another week, tiny white tendrils began groping their way into the watery world from the base of each stem.

When there looked to be enough sturdy tendrils to seek sustenance in the soil, I transplanted them into little pots and put them outside to survive in the real world.

The new geraniums are now flourishing so, as I’m no spring chicken, I’m setting my sights on using the same powers on myself when I reach the end.

But, after thinking it through a little, I foresee a hiccup. I won’t be able to use my new-found life-restoring powers because, at the time, I will be deceased.