Friller, Filler, and Spiller

Last Saturday Mom and I ventured back out to the garden store.  This is the same store that I mentioned about a year ago where Dave, the weed expert, used my mom in a spacial relations experiment with henbit (ah, it only took me 10 months, but I diagnosed the weed species myself!)  This garden store has been a landmark in Salt Lake and quite frankly, everyone in my family goes there so we haven't sought out many other experts.

I was stressed out about my impending marriage so mom indulged me by buying all of the flowers if I would just fill the pots.  I love to garden, she doesn't have the time.  It worked out well.  We began to puruse the snapdragons, petunias, nicotania, and other really pretty flowers I don't know the names of.  As our cart was getting full, a small Asian woman with the nametag, "Clara," approached us.

"How are you going to arrange your pots?"  She asked in a very heavy accent.

"Uh, like we always do.  We stuff them in there."  I replied, truly showing my artistic landscaping genius.  She looked horrified.

"No no no!  You must have a fwiller, fillwer, and spillwer."  Ok, I looked again at her nametag.  It noted that she also spoke Dutch and German.  No wonder I couldn't understand her.  Is Clara really a popular Asian name?

"Thriller?"  Thinking Michael Jackson style.

"No," she paused to make sure her consonants were correct, "frwiller, fillwer and spillwer."  She went to get a pot and pointed to the components again.  "I am here to make sure you have the formula to make your neighbors jealous of your pots, you choose the colors.  All you have in your cart are fillwers."

I began to think back to my grandmothers' pots over the years, whom I regarded as greenthumbs, and never heard these three terms come out of their mouths.

I once again began to ask about the "thriller" again in my cultural insensitivity.  Was it more rude to just smile and pass her off or keep asking for clarification?  I still could not understand her when my mom rescued me, "What's a friller?" 

"Ah!" Clara ran over to another pot to point at grass.  "Fth, frwillers are tall spiky things that stick up.  Gwrasses, you know.  Fwrillers."   She was beaming as she pointed to things that looked like mini yucca plants that I mistakenly planted in my back yard months ago not realizing they belonged in pots.  No wonder they weren't thriving.

We picked up two of them and asked if we had any spillers.

"No, no.  You want some of these, but we are out."  She pointed to some lovely looking yellow mumish daisy things.  "Very popular."  She added not realizing that her advice was not helpful if they were out of stock.

I left my mom  with Clara as she once again began to repeat the formula to her and I looked for anything looking like it was trying to escape its plastic container.  I didn't even notice the colors of the blooms or how big it grew, I just started throwing them in the cart.  Spillers my foot.

I came back to Clara then telling my mom that hanging baskets only should have spillers in them.  Ok, now I realize I committed gardening cardnal sin #45 of only putting in fillers in those suckers months ago.  I just figured the leggy pansies looked fine.  We thanked Clara who seemed pleased with herself that she had helped another struggling customer with her gardening wisdom and checked out.

On the way home I began to note the neighbors who got the formula right.  I think I only counted about 4.  That night I was telling my grandmother, Ginny, the story and asked if she had heard of this friller, filler, spiller theory.  She looked me dead in the eye and said, "yes."  It was like my years of shadowing this woman in the garden did squat.  However,  Clara would be proud of the envy over the 9 pots  I filled correctly with the holy trinity of potting formula.