CD’s Yield 3.5% – Plants Yield 400%

My mother explained it to me carefully: I should give her my newly earned $5.00 and we would open a savings account for me. In nine years (double my age at that time!) it would “grow” and I could use it for college.

She said it several times as she drove me to the bank and had me sign my official “Young Savers Club Passbook”.

“But, Mommy”, I wailed as we left the bank, “I don’t want it to grow for the future! I want to buy ice cream now!”

With age, we begin to see that saving money now can yield a big payoff in the future. We put our money into savings accounts, CD’s and Treasury notes so that they will fund our retirement or our children’s college tuition. These days, though, interest rates are in the low single digits.

That’s why I felt so good when I looked under my sweet smelling viburnum and found four vigorous sprouts that had appeared since last fall. They were promptly dug up and distributed to friends!

The hosta turned out the same way: I divided one big clump into four smaller clumps and put them along a path in the back yard. Each small clump will develop big leaves this summer and I’ll be able to divide them again in a few years.

I can barely keep ahead of the monkey grass (liriope). I dug up a big ball of foliage and roots and washed the soil from them as best I could. I truly believe that I could have gotten a hundred plants from that one clump! I didn’t really need that many so I divided the ball into eight sections with a sharp shovel and planted them all at the back of a fern bed.

The “Homestead Purple” Verbena that I planted last spring has rooted the branches all around the mother plant. It is already blooming now but I carefully scooped the soil and roots under several rooted branches and put each one in a six inch pot. They will stay in the shade under an apple tree for a month until they are ready to be planted back in the sun.