Dear Sandee-
 
I know that this is sort of unusual, but could you please welcome my
african violet with the little dark purple ruffled blossoms?  I found
it on the carpet last night, limp, all the fuzzy leaves perforated by
hundreds of fang holes.
 
Usually, I can re-pot a plant that Switch and Lily have paid an unusual
amount of ferrety attention to.  Not this time.  The stems were broken.
The leaves were pulped.  I think that one of them must have held the poor
little thing in her teeth and 'bunny kicked' all the dirt out of the root
system with her back feet.
 
I thought about asking our FML on-line herb specialist, Many Conley, if
there was anything to be done, but in my heart I knew it was too late.
(Besides, her consultation fee is sky-high.  How does she sleep?)
 
I thought about asking our own Judith White to send it a blast of reiki
healing energy through the ether, but I'm pretty sure she only does
animal reiki, not plant reiki.  (You don't want to confuse the two!
What if you receive the wrong kind for your headache, and wake up in
the morning to discover that you have somehow been transmogrified into
a giant parsnip?)
 
I thought about asking our own Kim Fox to give me a remote 'reading' on
it, but I have a pretty good idea of what it was thinking.  Something
like "Oooo, I'm dyin' I'm dyin' I'm dyin'.  " Or "AAAAGGHH!!
FERRRRRETTS!  BEING EATEN BY FERRRRRETS!!!" It could be pretty traumatic
for her.  I'm not sure she's ever read a plant before, either.  What if
she tries and something goes tragically wrong, and she spends the rest
of her life sitting on a sunny windowsill?  I wouldn't want to be
responsible for something like that.
 
No, it's time to accept that my african violet has crossed the bridge.
If you can, Sandee, can you nudge its' roots over to the pink gloxinia
and the red flowered christmas cactus that those two bitc...I mean high
spirited ladies of mine with dirty paws sent across the bridge a few
weeks ago?  Somewhere there's also another african violet or two that
they have mangled, and a nepeta cataria (catnip) that my cat ate down
to the roots.
 
Thank you.
Alexandra in Massachusetts
 
Switch the Kit: "Well, how was it, Lily?"
Hurricane Lily: "(BURP!) Hee-HEE!"
[Posted in FML issue 4077]