When I close my eyes and picture my home, I see clean, dust-free surfaces with everything put up carefully where it belongs. But most of all, I see plants. Lots of them. Green everywhere. Leaves, vines, flowers invading your vision.
When I open my eyes, I see chaos. Okay, I've got 3 kids and a bit of a lazy side, so I accept that. But what breaks my heart is that instead of lush plants everywhere, I have alot of pots with sticks poking pitifully out of them. I try so hard to be good to my plants. I water them, I feed them, I'm not ashamed to admit, I even talk to them. Yet they all choose to commit suicide. Is it possible I am driving them crazy?
Last year when my brother-in-law, Robert passed away, I received some beautiful house plants. They were the first plants trusted to my possession since my father-in-law passed away almost 10 years ago. One of the plants I got was a peace lilly that Mark and I had got for the children for the funeral home. I explained my brown thumb to the lady at the flower shop, she scoffed at me in that way that only people with a green thumb can do, and informed me there is no way to kill a peace lilly. Are you kidding me? In my lifetime, I have killed 4 peace lillies, but we still chose it anyway.
Some friends also bought a lilly that we brought home. The day we brought it home it was a big, beautiful, green bushy plant. Today it is a sad anorexic shell of itself. Only about a fourth of it is still alive, but I can't bear to trim off the dead leaves because then the plant would look even worse. I've thought about trying to get it into some kind of therapy before it completely goes to the big garden in the sky.
My personal record for killing houseplants is 3 in one day. A friend told me to water them with leftover coffee. Sounded like a great idea, so I brewed them their own pot, then let it cool, and served it to them black in the morning. By that afternoon, I had the carcasses of a peace lilly, a rubber plant, and a schefflera in my living room. That was 10 years ago, and I guess I haven't gotten any better at plant nurturing.
The funny thing? The peace lilly that Mark and I bought is actually still alive and thriving nicely. The really funny thing is that that plant sits behind our entertainment center. The reason for that is because the pot was just the right height to hold a stick that I use as a prop to hold up the surge protector for the TV. I figured it would die anyway, so I just stuck it back there. Lo and behold, I check it every so often, and there it is grinning at me, almost as if to say, "I'm one tough SOB lady, it's gonna take more than you to kill me". Who am I to question that?
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