Houseplant Homicide

 It’s not like I don’t have anything else to blog about. It’s just that I’m at a point of frustration that wants venting. Here’s the deal:

I love having plants around. That’s the way I grew up. My mother, sister, grandmother, aunts, etc. all fill their homes with lush greenery: Boston ferns, pothos, African violets, Swedish ivy, schefflera, peace lilies, bromeliads, dieffenbachia, and a bunch of others I can’t spell. But me? Forget about it!

Climbing the walls in the kitchen

Oh, I do have successes every now and then. There’s an ivy turning the kitchen into a jungle. And those cheap poinsettias I picked up at Walmart last Christmas are flourishing like gangbusters out in the Texas heat. No kidding.  Three times I’ve had to move them to larger containers.

 

My last remaining weed

But just let me try to get something going in my office! With my attempts becoming a prohibitive expense, I began casting about the hiking trail on my morning walks. Any weed with a pretty leaf would do, I decided.  I’m talking about the plain old everywhere-in-the-backyard kind of thing you can’t even kill with freakin’ Roundup^®!



But it didn’t work. I killed them. No matter how tenderly potted with Miracle-Gro, they all shriveled and died within hours.

A lucky succulent and a
new jade plant

So what about succulents, I asked myself. They’re hardy. Indeed, they are hardier, but not Mary-proof. My moss rose bloomed madly for a week before turning jaundiced and spindly and croaking shortly thereafter.



Pothos and some sort of succulent
with brown side turned away

And so, dear friends, what I’m going to do is use this blog to memorialize such weeds, succulents and ivies as are with me at this moment. It seems the least I can do to reward their tragic sacrifice.

Next week I’ll get back to business.

Thank you.