Every Rooms Needs A Bit Of Green

journey from plant-killer to plant-keeper

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Photo by Huy Phan on Unsplash

My houseplants aren’t quite dead so much as reproachful-looking. I don’t overwater them, poison them, step on them, or buy diseased stock.

It’s simpler than that: I just forget about them. I lead a busy life. Keeping myself and my husband afloat while working sixty hours a week seems more vital than remembering to water the vegetation.

My husband, a good man, feels bad for the plants.

“This one looks...bad,” he says, sort of swallowing the end of the sentence. He tosses to me the crisp remains of something that used to be orange and green and glossy. Even in its sort of mummified state it looks vaguely tropical. 

“I know, I’m sorry!” I cry. For the moment I really mean it; I hate killing plants. I also hate when Andrew witnesses me having killed plants. He shrugs and avoids eye contact. It’s hard to say whether he feels worse for the doomed bromeliad, or for me, whose plant body-count has risen by one since yesterday.

It is really kind of immoral at this point. I took this plant out of the natural world where it had hitherto lived in peace, and forced it to decorate my guest room. To be fair, this plant came from a nursery, not the wild. Yet I had the care and keeping of this thing and I failed. Whose idea was it to put live plants in a guest room we rarely use? Mine. I became a plant-murderer mostly because I don’t believe in faux succulents as home decor.

After the bromeliad casualty, I assure us - husband, plants, myself - that I will try to reform. I crowd the most ailing flora from around the house onto our kitchen table. This table lives near the largest windows in our shady townhouse. The table is small, round, and already crowded with a narcissistic jade plant and a stack of mail. Yanking the Venetian blinds upward, I am soothed by warm thoughts of a convalescent home for sick plants. They’ll like it here with the Eastern aspect and neighbors to spy on.

“Have some sunlight,” I say.

My generosity is guilt-riddled as I have lately remembered two things: that sunlight is equivalent to food for plants, and that these have inhabited the shadow-realm of our living room for months.

“Sorry, plants. Eat up.” 

I tell an unhappy pothos that I have come to the rescue. I pluck its yellowed leaves and trim its leaf-forsaken vines. It doesn’t look better, only shorter; like trying to cut your own bangs. Nevertheless I am a determined reformee. For the time being, I am what you might even call “lavish” with the care I place on these anemic-looking specimens. I re-pot a few of them, give them water, turn them daily in the transient sunlight of the bay window so they can take turns feeding in the brightness. The plants begin to look resigned, if not healthy.

Once upon a time this table was for eating, not for pitching a Red Cross Tent. Now clumps of potting soil cling to window sills. Despite my best revival efforts, several dead leaves have drifted onto the stained tabletop. Grocery store herbs, once living, are now but fragrant ghosts. Everywhere I look are macabre reminders of my distinct lack of green-thumbness. Sure, the arrangement is a little messy but I need the table to continue duty as a plant hospital. 

Such are the kitchen window plants.

But the monstera deliciosa in the living room is my pride and joy. Its large, face-sized leaves are doing what monstera leaves are famous for: growing huge, splitting into “swiss cheese” holes, putting forth a new leaf every few weeks. I seldom forget to water this plant since it is in my direct line of sight when sitting on the couch. I even dusted its leaves once. The monstera is a showy monument to the best parts of my attention span. I am proud of this anomaly in my decrepit home-jungle. It proves, to me at least, that if I really wanted to, I could be good at houseplants. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at that monstera, buster.

The only other plant to so tolerate my neglect is Dracanea trifasciata: the vibrant “snake plant.” I was once told that snake plants thrive on neglect. I am not sure any living thing can “thrive” on neglect, but the snake plants are relatively happy with my laissez faire husbandry. They even shoot up a new, striped leaf every so often in tentative approval. Greatly cheered by the idea of a plant that doesn’t need me, I keep two. One grows in a large gray coffee mug. The other lives next to my blue-velvet couch and occasionally receives the final drops of an after-dinner seltzer. I think it prefers bubbles in its water. It has leastwise never complained.

Andrew says I cannot have any more plants. He is an unfailingly generous person, but even generous people grow tired of senseless massacres. He agrees with me that every room should have something green. That is perhaps the one rule of interior design to which we mutually adhere: rooms need greenery just as sick people need flowers. These are the first principles of our floral faith. But a tipping point has been reached: he cannot support bringing more victims into the fray. It isn’t fair to our feelings and it certainly isn’t fair to the plants. Besides, when I do take them to the window hospital every guilty spell, we will eventually run out of space; ours is not a very large table.

Reluctantly, I agree with him. No more plants. I mean it this time.

A month onward, I fall into temptation.  I have self-control in the same way my car has cruise-control: it’s there but I don’t always use it.

One thing leads to another and I cannot bear to leave a beautiful jasmine vine at the store. It looks so fresh and elegant with its tightly closed buds promising blossoms to come. I reason that if the jasmine permanently lives in the sun near the jade plant, perhaps it can enjoy itself. Jasmine is not just another bunch of dispirited green leaves. It is different. Andrew won’t possibly mind once he realizes he loves it. I furtively carry it in.

Then, a moment later, I unpack a miniature orchid as well. I hide it in plain view on the mantel, taking advantage of my husband’s temporary blindness as he scrolls on his phone. It’s a tiny orchid, really, barely noticeable. Certainly not important enough for controversy.  If Andrew does notice, he says nothing. Perhaps he realizes the futility.

 In the busy leadup to the Christmas holidays, I fall ill with a fever. I am almost never ill and therefore not a very good patient. I install myself in a bad-tempered heap on our oversize chair. I try to sleep. Crinkling noises, as of cellophane, awaken me. I peer out of groggy, feverish eyes to see Andrew standing near. He holds a poinsettia wrapped in festive red and smiles sheepishly.

“You always say a sick room needs fresh flowers,” he says.

This is rich! A co-conspirator in the plant-smuggling trade. The discovery of my husband with a gaudy red plant he bought against his principles is delightful; sexy, even. I think of kissing him, then refrain on behalf of his immune system. Time enough for that later. He turns the poinsettia so I can enjoy it from my disgruntled position, and kisses my forehead.

“Feel better, love.” 

Truly the best man. 

A month later, the poinsettia has wilted, along with the Christmas tree. The jasmine doesn’t live much longer - she needed better daylight. But I am well again and the snake plants, the jade tree, and the monstera live on, as do a few leaves of the pothos with its unfortunate haircut.

As the year advances forward, I cajole three sprigs of a formerly-splendid fern back to consciousness and semi-revive a thirsty Christmas cactus which was a gift (and therefore not my fault). Perhaps I really should be forbidden to keep plants...but it is not yet outlawed. And the deepest part of me knows that I can learn to care for these plants the way I am learning to care for myself: I will make mistakes but try again and even again, if I need to.

Saturdays will be my watering-day.

I can reliably form this habit the way I am forming other habits like working out and spending less and not skipping breakfast. I have hopes. I will live my life and try to help the plants live theirs. We’ll get the hang of things. I know us.

Nine months later, I have added even more plants to the menagerie. I am up to twenty-eight green children now: I am the old lady who lives in a shoe. And miraculously, the plants are all...happy. Recently, I divided four baby aloes from a big mother plant who keeps sprouting babies. I resurrected a wizened African violet by giving her an extended stay in the plant hospital. The violet is twice the size she used to be, and bloomed this week: a lovely lavender blossom and two more buds besides. That three-sprigged fern I nursed back to life? It sports twelve, feathery fronds now. I’ve propagated a showy prayer plant from a gifted cutting. I’ve dusted the monstera’s leaves at least twice more. I even bought a self-watering pot for a finicky purple passion plant who loves it.

Then, unexpectedly, our rickety, crickety cat dies. I don’t expect it’s because of her habit of gnoshing on the bromeliad next to Andrew’s end of the couch, is it? Or going out back and chewing on lemon basil and peppermint and the odd grasshopper? She was old and increasingly frail; probably a failing organ.

Still, we are very sad.

We bury her under an apple tree at my parents’ property, in view of the sunset. I wish I could cry a lot but mostly I just grimly find something to laugh about. Laughing means I don’t have to think about the awful moment of lifting her from under the guest bed and wrapping her in a linen picnic blanket because I didn’t have anything else. I’ll miss her, and I’ll miss that picnic blanket, and I think she’ll like the apple tree. I know I would.

The next day, I feel I have the immediate right to purchase a large fiddle leaf fig tree I’ve been eyeing. So I do.

“In her memory,” I tell Andrew, protectively. Really I just want our cat to not be dead.

Andrew, having gone on a sad spending-spree of his own, is in full support of my ficus in memoriam.

To be sure, the fiddle leaf fig is handsome and almost makes me feel better. Not really better, but it’s nice to look at. It fills up the empty corners of not having a pet for the first time in thirty years. Designers would say that the fig tree adds “visual interest” to that corner of the living room. Psychologists would say I’m avoiding my sadness. But I think I can be very sad and also admire a fiddle leaf fig in a moss-colored pot. Surely that’s allowable.

Either way, I sprang for the five foot tree and it is shaped like a lollipop; a fine specimen.

I don’t feel guilty about this new dependent, or accepting the orchid my mother buys to console me about our cat (like mother, like daughter). I am kind of good with plants now, and kind of good at admitting heavy feelings. I’ve worked hard this year to be better at both.

Watering on Saturdays.

Saying when I’m sad.

Taking care of myself and my plants.

And slowly, I am growing like one of the living things that have filled our home with cool, green vines. I am taking up space as surely as the pothos is crawling toward the sliding glass doors, clinging elegantly to command strips on its way toward the light. I trim off my yellow leaves and hydrate better. I buy a bigger pot when I need to. And when life requires it, I am strong enough to divide myself and beautify several places at once.

I like slowing down enough to take care of myself and my plants. They are pretty. They are alive. As am I. It feels good, to be alive. Better, now that we are not also wilting for lack of good care.

Andrew and I still believe in our rule, still apply it in our ever-more-leafy townhouse: every room needs a bit of green.

Tomorrow I’ll cut some more pothos to soak in a water-filled jam jar; see if it won’t put out roots; give it to the new neighbors moving in next door on October 1st. A fresh start for everybody: plant and people. Every home needs something green. And we do have lots to spare.

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