Something botanical (part 1)

Some people are blessed with a green thumb. I am not one of those people. The first plant I ever had was a charming little pink and green leafy thing that had polka dots.

Having never seen a plant with polka dots before I decided at the ripe age of 19 that I needed to venture into the botanical world of house plants.  At first the polka-dot plant thrived. It was doing so well that I decided it needed a bigger pot, and so I put the plant in the biggest pot I could find - a huge plastic white thing that might have been more appropriate for a tree now that I think about it. I didn't know at that point that plants can experience shock and post-traumatic stress disorder at being transplanted into a pot that is way bigger than they are accustomed to.  Plants are people too. Within a month my polka dot plant was dead. I was devastated.  What did this say about me as a person: killer of houseplants?

My next major house plant project was raising potato plants.  Yes, you read that right, potato plants.  Seeking to vindicate myself after my previous failure I decided one day to plant an old sprouting potato inside a pot to see what happened. Maybe if I was lucky I would get potatoes out of it!  The potato started off well: it was so cute and tiny inside the pot, like a kitten or a puppy or a baby gopher. Like a baby animal it was easy to coddle and exclaim over it how adorable it was.  However, like a baby animal the plant grew; and just as adult animals rarely retain the charm that their childlike selves had, the potato plant lost all charm it had  by being tiny and quickly became one of the ugliest houseplants you can imagine. It looked like a weed in a pot, all scraggly and bent over, a half-naked weed.  People would come over and wince and try to politely avert their eyes from the hideous eyesore it was. I stubbornly loved that plant, like a mother who refused to acknowledge that her child could have any faults.  I continued to coddle the plant watering it regularly, encouraging it to grow and yield me baby potatoes.  But then tragedy struck - my plant got bugs. Little flies that resembled fruit flies got into the soil of my plant and within a month that plant was too dead.

I was not ready to admit that maybe house plants were not my destiny. Having found two baby potatoes in the pot I tried planting them to continue the legacy of ugly houseplants.  But eventually, like their predecessor, they too got flies and died.  By then I was beginning to seriously doubt my abilities as a human being, and as a woman. I couldn't even keep a plant alive, how could I hope to ever raise an animal, or a baby?  Would people judge me if they knew how my plants ended up?  It wasn't over a lack of love, of that I was certain!  Desiring so much to be a good plant mother, I watered my plants almost every single day.  I spoke to them, breathed on them, named them.  Why were they contracting mysterious ailments and dying?  Was I cursed?

Are you as conflicted as I was about the situation? Go to part 2!