Renewing Old Leaves.

It was stinking hot today and I walked outside past a couple of Camellia Bushes in our new yard. I have yet to see them in flower so can’t tell you what colour they are yet but I noticed that some of the old leaves were rather spotty.

I used to work for a guy who grew a few camellias and so I did pick up a little about their habits and needs. For instance, although they are best suited for filtered light or shade, some plants cope with full sun quite well. As a general rule of thumb though, it is the darker colours that flourish in the sun. Therefore the lighter the colour, right down to white, the more shade the better.

Also, although they can be sprinkled with water from above, it is best not to do so on a hot day as the sun often boils the water on the leaves before it has had time to be absorbed in or to evaporate from. If you do sprinkle them on a hot day and they burn and become spotty, you have to put up with them till the new growth replaces them. The only problem there is that it takes the Camellia bush three years to completely renew all its old leaves. So you can burn and ruin the look of your Camellia plant in a matter of a few hours, but have to wait as long three years to have it re-fresh itself fully.

A lot of our mistakes are a bit like that aren’t they? Easy to make but hard to cover up. So what do we do? Well mistakes will always happen no matter how careful we are, so when they do we just have to fix them up as best we can and live with the results.

With that in mind though, it is a wise move, is it not, to make sure every time you do something, that you do it properly at the start and take no short cuts or chances on mistakes happening.

It may be an old saying of my mother’s but the old maxim of, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

So what are you doing right now that a little more care and prevention now will save you heartache and eyesores well into the Future. Just something for you to ponder on for today.