Like most people, I haven’t lived all these years on this planet
without becoming confused about a thing or two.
Like most people, I haven’t lived all these years on this planet without becoming confused about a thing or two.
But, I admit, one of the things that confuses me the most is why people keep trusting me to take care of their houseplants. Oh, it’s not like I don’t like flora and fauna and all that, but let’s just say I’m the sort of person who has trouble maintaining the delicate balance of nature.
Oh sure, there are occasional success stories about exceptionally hearty plants that have withstood my care, but for the most part, the ones with the highest survival rate at my house are of the silkea plastica variety.
But just try explaining this to a desperate person who needs you to take care of their houseplants so they can go away on vacation. Go ahead, try it.
If you’re anything like me, you won’t have the heart to say no and you’ll somehow end up getting talked into doing it as a – ha, ha – favor.
Sure, the directions seem simple enough. “All you have to do is water it twice a week,” they’ll call as they drop it on my doorstep with the car running. “And it should be fine.”
Fat chance.
Of course, the plant will start out looking good. Maybe even great. It might even look pretty sitting in your living room on your bookshelf.
However, don’t let this act fool you.
For example, take a particularly sensitive potted bougainvillea I’ll call Justine. A year ago, I got stuck watching her while my friend Barb went to the Bahamas. Now that just shows my bad attitude. I shouldn’t say, “I got stuck.” I think I may have accidentally volunteered. I’m sure I was thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad. And it wasn’t.
But sometime around the third day living with my family, her leaves shriveled and went brown. This should’ve been my first clue that something was wrong.
So I moved her into the kitchen which had more light. The next day she lost her flowers. I gave her some vitamins. Then she went limp. I sprayed her with organic fungicide to kill earwigs and mites. She grew scaly. I put her underneath a heat lamp on my nightstand and read her chapters from a steamy romance novel. She died.
Frankly, I could never quite forgive myself.
When Barb came back, I broke the bad news and offered to buy her a new one.
“Oh, that’s OK,” she said a little too brightly. “Really.”
Then she ran for her car.
Soon after that, the word was out on the street that I was a willing plant sitter. The next thing I knew my friend Linda dropped off her high-maintenance topiary. This was followed by my neighbor Pat’s temperamental tomato plant, and then a mysterious, slightly hostile, bonsai tree.
All of which I killed off almost immediately.
Which makes me wonder why people still bring me their plants to watch. Call me crazy, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe, people don’t want them back. That my house has become, in fact, some kind of dumping ground for unmanageable houseplants.
As crazy as this sounds, it would sure explain a lot of things like, say, why my friend Tammy has never picked up the out-of-control fichus tree she dropped off before she left on vacation last spring, and why I found three nervous-looking fuchsias sitting on my doorstep this morning.
Of course, this could all be just my imagination. Maybe odd forces are at work and people actually trust me because they think I’m good with plants.
And, really, I am getting better with them. In fact, the other day, I think I actually bonded with a philodendron. Well, at least, I watered it, and it didn’t die.
All right, so it might’ve been a coincidence. But sometimes, with nature, that’s enough.
