Old School – Self Reliance 101

Students of the Old School know the Damsel loves old fashioned things–and that includes old fashioned flowers like Grandma had in her garden. And the flower she loves best is lilacs.

There’s something sweetly innocent about these little blossoms. Cute, yes, but it’s their fragrance the Damsel loves so dearly.

The Damsel has a few lilac bushes in her yard but because there can never be enough lilacs in the world for her taste, she decided to learn how to take cuttings from her bushes to make more. The Damsel has considerable practice at making babies and would like to say that making baby lilacs is ridiculously easy. Comparatively speaking.

There are a few ways of bringing a new lilac baby into the world. This is perhaps the easiest…digging up and replanting a sucker.

Lilacs can grow pretty large. This specimen is only a teenager…planted some ten years ago when it was a 2 foot tall stick. If you don’t have lilacs of your own to use, you may know someone who wouldn’t mind giving you a start.

On a day that’s not too hot, look at the base of the bush. Usually, you’ll see a large woody base, almost tree-ish, out of which branches and stems are growing. Some, like in this picture, seem to be growing out of the ground but are actually attached to the mother base. These are baby “suckers,” feeding off the mother plant. The parallels to human motherhood are obvious.

With a sharp shovel, slice deeply downward next to the mother base, separating the sucker from the mother. Hopefully, a few roots will remain on the sucker.

Put this baby in its own hole, tamp the soil around it, and water well.

The Damsel’s #4 sprog left for a Mormon mission this week, and it indeed felt like something was sliced off. It wasn’t that she didn’t know this day would come. She knew when she got him, she couldn’t keep him tiny forever. Still, the slice-off hurt like the devil.

But proud! So proud. And so joyous the child survived the faltering attempts at parenting…being a guinea pig for his parents’ on-the-job training…to become strong enough to survive the slice.