Green Thumb

I must be the worst gardener on the planet. You probably think you collected that award years ago, but I have news for you. There is only one rotten nurserywoman per century, and she is me. My reputation is so vast that no one has ever even asked me to volunteer with the babies at church. Just mention my name and the word nursery in the same sentence and watch what happens. Mothers run away screaming with their infants and florists lock their doors. Thus, the reason you never received a flower arrangement from me at the birth of your child. By the way, belated congratulations.

Obviously, some confusion has occurred. Let me clear things up once and for all. Babies like me. Plants don’t.

I’ve mentioned this problem before, but since the number of followers who read my blog is less than the total number of surviving plants in my front yard, it may have gone unnoticed. Shocking, right? It doesn’t make sense to me either. I’m a kindhearted soul.  I’ve donated to people in need. Wiped the tears from brokenhearted grandbabies. Thrown my trash in the garbage instead of the street. You’d think I could make plants like me. Help them reach their full potential. Thrive and flourish and elicit rapturous sighs from every visitor who walks into my home believing it to be a virtual Garden of Eden. I think I’ve figured it out.

I don’t care about plants.

They’re just so . . . needy. Look at them over in the corner of the living room, leaves dull and lifeless, holding their breaths until they turn yellow. It’s like they’re dramatically gasping, “Hey, we’re thirsty over here.” Or, “You overwatered us again.” I mean, make up your mind. Underwatering turns the leaves yellow and overwatering turns the leaves yellow and lack of nutrients turn the leaves yellow. The way I see it, it’s easier to grow yellow plants than green ones so I’m just doing them all a favor.

I had some kind of tall green thing given to me as a housewarming present when I moved into this house a year ago, and I want you to know I’m incredibly proud of how long it lasted. It sat on my kitchen island until last week. Pretty good, right? It wasn’t thirsty. It wasn’t drowning. It had all its vitamins, I guess. It was safe inside where I keep the air conditioner at a comfortable arctic setting. It had everything in the world to live for. And do you know what took it down? The pot was too small. I threw that whiner in the trash last week, wrestling its rangy stalks into a kitchen-sized garbage bag while I closed my eyes so it couldn’t accuse me of committing a crime. “Don’t look at me like that,” I told it, gritting my teeth as I tied off the bag.

Last night it reappeared. In my dreams.  I think I’m being haunted by a house plant.

There’s another possibility. I don’t think it’s my fault that I can’t grow things. I come from a short line of women with overly green thumbs. It’s a genetic disorder which, I’m sure I read somewhere, could be caused by consuming too much broccoli. At any rate, they kept all the luck with plants for themselves and I didn’t get any. Which is fine with me. I don’t like broccoli anyway. 

Still, people who brag about “shoving a stalk of rutabaga in the ground and watching it take off” really get on my nerves. They don’t understand people like me. A good friend of mine sat me down once and tried to fix me. She was one of those broccoli lovers.

“All you have to do is water them,” she said about African violets, like it was easy. I stared at her like she was speaking Portuguese.

She nodded, noticing the problem. “Or maybe you could just hang pictures of plants around your house,” she offered weakly, like I hadn't already thought of that.

“Then I’d have to dust them,” I answered.

She bit her lip. “Yeah, vicious cycle."

I thought that was the end of the discussion. But when Christmas rolled around, she gave me a special gift. I opened the wrapping and pulled a small, handcrafted clay pot out of the box. It was filled with potting soil over a Styrofoam base and held a cluster of greenery.

“It’s a Velvet Plant!” she said, clapping her hands in delight. “I made it myself.”

She did. There were seven handsewn leaves crafted of wire and dark green velvet, each securely shoved into the Styrofoam base and artistically bent to resemble a houseplant. I looked at the tiny card protruding from the soil and read its name. “Fictus Phyllos.”

“It means Fake Plant,” she told me. The card also contained care instructions. “Never water. Requires no sunlight. Thrives on neglect.”

A tear escaped my eye. I loved that little plant. But I still had to dust it.

A few weeks ago, one of my granddaughter’s cousins asked me to take care of her snake plant for the weekend while she and her family flew out of state for a wedding. Apparently because my surviving houseplants pretended to be happy, she had the impression I could keep her beloved plant alive for five days.

“All you have to do is keep it in a spot with indirect sunlight and water it on Wednesday and Saturday,” she said, fully confident that those were simple directions. “I’ll pick it up Monday,” she finished. I broke out in a cold sweat but assured her that I would keep it alive. Actually, I didn’t use those exact words. I just smiled and prayed for a miracle. I’m only human, you know.

But I did keep it alive and to my enormous relief, she picked it up as promised on Monday and I never had to look at it again.

I don’t get it. I don’t understand how other people can keep green things green unless they’re buying plastic plants. I don’t know why trees keep growing in the desert and dehydrated roses can bloom and Mexican Petunias look deprived every afternoon yet explode with purple blossoms each and every new morning. The only thing that makes me think I’m not as pathetic as I seem is this time of year, when fall arrives. Every single leaf on the ash tree overhanging my patio is about to turn brown and fall to its death on the concrete below, leaving an expression I can only describe as bewildered consternation on that massive tree in the pasture.

If even God struggles to keep things looking green sometimes, I must be in pretty good company. 

With thanks to Chad Miller for pretending to be a worse gardener than me. Nice try, and thanks for the great picture. The original photo can be viewed here: Everyone in my family has a "green thumb," except me. The… | Flickr