Not You Again

 I love plants, I really do, but my relationships with growing things usually wind  up like a Joe Goldberg episode in You. No matter how promising things look at the start, or no matter how beautiful the plants may be, I always, always kill them.

I don't want to, don't mean to, wish I wouldn't, but somehow or other, I over water (because by the time I do they look dry), or go on a trip and come back to a mostly brown and thirsty plant, or the cat eats them, or just being in the sun or the shade too much works against them, and the next think I know I'm throwing them out--yet again.

Whether that makes me a little more like my Beat heroine Ruby in the Beat Street series, I couldn't say (actually, I could, which is why I brought it up here). It also makes me wonder if I can write a new essay about Tu B'Shvat (Jewish New Year for trees) that would expand on the chapter in my spiritual bio Crooked Lines. (And that chapter is about escaping death myself--narrowly.)

The more I think about it, though, the less I understand why some people's thumbs are so green and mine are more like The Addams Family's Morticia, cutting the roses off her stems and throwing the roses in the trash. It seems like a simple enough thing--water, sun, growth--but for me, it never is.

The same is more of less true of my garden, which is why my husband and I finally gave up and hired people who understand flowers, plants and weeds to help us. Sometimes they talk to me like I really understand what they are doing, which of course, I do not. 

Things like positioning flowers and plants a foot apart (or six inches? I have no idea and never remember), feeding as well as watering, and most of all weeding, are all things I don't do well. In fact, the idea of bending over and staying there while trying to pull up nasty hand-scratchers like Thistle sends me right back indoors again double quick.

When I was in college, I sublet an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts that had glorious light, and the owner made me promise to water her plants regularly. She had rows and rows of beautiful plants on shelves in her window, and left detailed instructions about how to keep the plants thriving. 

At some point, the owner decided to move away and leave me the apartment, which was a good thing because I was able to get a roommate who loved plants and knew how to care for them. Otherwise, I am certain they all would have perished.

Friends who don't know me as well as I'd like them to get me plants sometimes for presents, and I want to tell them in a few weeks, said plants will wither and crack. I don't tell them because I'm touched that they spent the money on a plant for me, somehow having faith that I will be good for it. I'm writing this blog in hopes that some of my friends see it and realize that what they are in fact doing when they gift me a plant is handing over an innocent being to a serial killer.

I have no wish to be anything like Joe Goldberg, I promise, and yet, when it comes to plants, I am. I can only ask that you try to remember this when thinking of a gift for me (and I don't mean to sound ungrateful.) But as spring approaches, you'd do better with a book or music (which doesn't mean you have to give me anything at all, really). Just don't give me a plant, I beg of you. I know the plant is begging, too.