One person once commented (pre-children) that if we had kids they would be transparent. Ducky and I are pretty pale. Especially Ducky. So needless to say we keep a lot of sunscreen in the house. And our children are just like us. And being the good mom that I try to be, I cover them with sunscreen on a regular basis all summer long.
One day last summer before I came downstairs, my sweetE had come down before me. I keep the sunscreen out in the garage, on the other side of a child proof doorknob. But on this day, Ducky had sunscreened himself prior to leaving for work and left the sunscreen sitting on the kitchen counter.
I'm not sure if he got up before me or if it was while I was in the shower. But he found the sunscreen, aerosol style, and commenced spraying it. All over my lovely, healthy plant. And the kitchen counters and covering a roll of paper towels. The plant was dripping sunscreen. The bottle had been pretty close to full and when sweetE finished with it, it was empty. I'm not sure where sweetP was at the time, maybe next door playing, but it was just sweetE and I in the house. So at least I knew who to blame. Somehow, he managed not to coat himself too much.
It took me over an hour to get all the sunscreen removed from the kitchen. My poor plant has not been the same since. Sunscreen is great for people, very hard on plants. Cleaning the sunscreen off was a an effort in futility. It requires soap, and scrubbing and lots of water. None of which are particularly good for plants. I cut off the worst of it. So my poor plant has been limping along for months now. It is finally starting to look like it might pull through and have a full recovery by summer. But will it ever bloom again.
5 comments:
Oh no. Makes me wonder though - do you think that sun screen would have the same effect on a plant as it does on a person? Would the sunscreen prevent photosynthesis?
i remember how tempting bottles and sprays were when i was a kid. oh my.
I am just impressed you can and did resuscitate your plant. I am so not a plant person. One time, when I was in the hospital, someone sent me this awesome basket full of beautiful plants. Buttercup was kind enough to (over)water the African violets for me....
I have a spray bottle story for you.
I had gotten my first laptop in order to be able to work while I was home with a sick child or something of the sort. It was fairly nice, but I'd gotten it secondhand. I was using it one day when I was home with all three kids on a snow day. I hadn't showered and asked the big kids to watch the little one, who was about two, while I showered. I had been ironing earlier and left my spray bottle on the kitchen table. When I got out of the shower, I walked in just in time to see my little guy spraying the front of my laptop with water and rubbbing it with a paper towel.
That laptop never worked again.
I love the aerosol sun screen! It is so nice when re-applying at the beach not to rub scratchy sand everywhere. We are made of fairly transparent skin as well. My father worked for many years for a company that makes sunscreen and he still gets a discount on it, which we take full advantage of.
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