I am a plant murderer.
I have never been able to keep a plant alive. Never.
It all started when I was about 11 or so and decided to plant a packet of seeds in an unused raised bed in the backyard. I faithfully watered those little seedlings day after day, standing out in the hot sun, eager to see my pretty flowers. Then came the fateful day when my mom informed me that when she walked by my raised bed to hang laundry, she saw little yellow flowers on the top of tall sage green stems… just like the ones growing in the dirt elsewhere. I had been watering weeds.
Then there was my next try, an herb of some variety when I was 13. I was determined to follow the example of my friend, Nicole, and become a botanist. I watered my little herb, whatever it was, and made sure it had proper sunlight…. for a while. Then I grew rather bored with it, and soon the leaves began to shrivel up and then the stems started bending over, and the next thing I knew, my mom suggested the brown remains be disposed of.
When I got married, I thought I’d try again. After all, wasn’t I a very mature and responsible grown woman at 18? (If I wasn’t then, I am now, right? With a baby at, uh,20? 
) So this time I followed the example of another friend (Heather, who was able to make her military base housing one street over from us look pretty and inviting despite the lack of any natural foliage) and put some pretty mums in pots along our front walkway. And I watered those faithfully, also watering the prickly front bushes in our yard and the yard of the empty house next to us while I was at it. I was doing so good! Those pokey bushes were perking up and the flowers stayed alive for about a month or so. An improvement indeed! But, then I began going a little longer between waterings and the next thing I knew, I was barely giving those pots a passing glance as I walked out to the car. After the now brown, dead stems and dried up leaves had sat for long enough to give their memory plenty of respect (at least a few months… until my mom had to tell me that she really thought these weren’t going to make it) I gave them a proper burial–in the garbage bin.
Then there was the plant I threw out the week before my Little Man was born. It was a very common house plant, with medium sized teardrop shaped leaves and long trailing vine-things… most of you probably know what the plants are called, as you probably have them in your homes, but to show my lack of knowledge of all things green, I do not. My Grammie, a woman with one of the greenest thumbs I’ve seen, gave this plant to my mom when she moved, who then gave it to me when we got married. I placed it on top of a high bookshelf, where it helped balance the corner of the room (a la the decorating book I had just read), but wasn’t noticed much. Soon, the long vine that hung gracefully down the side of the bookshelf began curling up. The leaves began to look yellow and then turned to brown. So, at mom’s suggestion, I clipped it down to a mere three leaves and one tiny stem, placed it somewhere that I’d see it and hopefully remember to water it, and started from scratch. Soon it was a pretty green plant again. So I moved it somewhere else. Not a good idea. When we moved from that house last summer, the poor plant had a few new green leaves thanks to my next-door neighbor, who would water it whenever she was at our house, nearly every day. But without her TLC, it began to shrivel up again. I tried to bring it back to life around Christmas time, but the poor plant had breathed it’s last. Finally, after a few months of being perched atop the refrigerator, it was laid to rest along with the others… in the garbage bin.
Today I am throwing away a pretty little plant with purple flowers that was given to us after Littlest was born. I did my best to keep it alive, watering it whenever the soil felt a little dry, every other day or so. But then it started looking sickly. I asked my mom what I had done, and she suggested backing off the watering. So I did. Somewhere in there it died. I held out hope that something good would happen and bring it back, but there are no longer any pretty purple flowers on it and the leaves are completely curled in on themselves. The stems are beginning to bend over. I’ve seen these symptoms before. The best thing to do it put the poor little plant in the lavender pot out of it’s misery. This time, I’m not waiting for Mom to see it and tell me it looks like it’s on it’s last leg. I’m resigned to doing it myself.
But you know, the ironic thing is that the person who has given me my plant advice and told me when they weren’t looking so good was once told by a green-thumbed friend, “A plant going to your house is like a plant going to the death camp.” I think she has tried to save me from what has become her lot. But I am a natural-born plant murderer. What is my mom’s lot in life is mine as well. So I suppose the real moral of this story is not, “Water your plants to keep from being a plant murderer,” but instead, as my dad and husband often remind us, “Like mother, like daughter. “
::grin::
–written May 5, 2006
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