Plant Killer

Some people have black thumbs. Some people have very green thumbs. My mom, for instance, could keep any plant alive and thriving no matter what. She would have the same non-flowering plant for ten years, one day decide she wanted it to blossom, the next day cast her magic, and the next day have a beautiful fragrant, flowering blossom! I, unfortunately, did not inherit this useful trait. My thumb isn’t quite black, it’s more like a dirty brownish-grey. I can keep a plant alive, but just barely. All my plants are always hanging on for dear life and preparing themselves to see their last day of sunshine, only to find themselves waking up the next morning in the same, miserable, wilting state. I think if plants really had emotions, what I do to them would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

I’ve never mean to be a plant torturer. I try to water them faithfully and give them sunlight and oxygen, but somehow, plants never thrive under my care. I had a daisy that I kept in a happy yellow pot for four years and the little plant never bloomed once after I started taking care of it.

When Kasey and I first were married we bought a “love fern”. I got the idea from a movie I liked as a teenager. If our love fern was any indication of how our marriage would turn out, we were in serious trouble. I had to keep buying new ones because they kept dying on me. Finally I just gave up on ferns altogether.

My family always had a large beautiful garden growing up. So one summer I decided it was time for our family to try a small one. We were very transient college students so for three years our garden consisted of a few pots with one tomato plant, one parsley plant, and a basil plant. The first year I got four tomatoes from my plant. Two of them got eaten by some nasty bug before they were even ripe, one of them was spread proudly on a green salad, and the other sat in the window sill waiting for me to use it until it went rotten and I had to throw it away. The second year wasn’t much different. The fourth year we had some crazy neighbor children and they came and picked all of the tomatoes when they were just baby tomatoes so we didn’t get a single one.

The worst luck I had with plants was when Cody or Bell would come home from some activity with a little bean seed in a cup. I always dreaded seeing their little happy excited faces with a cup of dirt in their hands, because I knew they would only be disappointed when I couldn’t get the darn thing to sprout. I did get lucky one time and the seed actually turned into a plant and started to grow. Cody was thrilled, but after several days of forgetting to water it, it started to wilt and eventually was nothing more than a brown stub. A few days after we had to throw the poor little bean plant away, we were walking past our “garden”, and Cody noticed that some of the plants were looking a little brownish. He immediately stopped in his tracks and shouted, “Mom, you are a plant killer!! You have to water the flowers!” I felt so bad, but of course, he was right.

I still am a plant killer. Maybe I should just give it up, but having something green and growing under my care is very appealing to me. I’ll probably try the rest of my life, and just keep on killing things, but who knows, maybe someday I’ll get lucky and find my green thumb.