unexpected plant person
My house is where plants come to die, and yet they keep coming to live with me
This is Harvey:
He is a calathea plant, and he was a gift from my sister-in-law. She asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I replied ‘Do you know … I fancy having a new plant friend.’
For context, I am a terrible person when it comes to plants. Every plant in my care up until this point has died. I forget to water them. I water them too much. I let them get overgrown by weeds. I let them get eaten by tiny little flies. It doesn’t seem to matter how good my intentions are: it all just goes to crap. And in the wake of another plant death, I vow that I won’t go through the whole cycle of buying compost/Googling the best plant food/having hopes and dreams ever again.
But something always happens. It happened this time after I watched a cheerful YouTuber explain how she grows four varieties of tomatoes on her balcony. And a little seedling (see what I did there?) of excitement starts to form in my mind. Maybe I can grow stuff! This time it will be different, I tell myself. I imagine myself pottering about the house with a little watering can, or wandering around the garden with a basket to collect my wares, popping blueberries and freshly grown peas in my mouth as I go.
(As a side note: I do this with almost every YouTube video I watch. The other day I watched a couple preparing their boat to live off-the-grid for a year, and I genuinely thought ‘wow, I wonder if I could live on a boat?’, which makes me question how many people make mad life-changing decisions because of smoothly edited twenty-minute vlogs.)
And on the cycle goes. I buy seeds, I buy pots, I grow plants, they die.
But this time HAS to be different. For one thing, this guy has a name. My daughter named him Harvey, and every time I look at him I want to binge-watch old episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Here I am taking Harvey home to live with us (plant Harvey, not 90’s heartthrob Harvey):
Will he join the legions of plants that have perished in my care? Only time will tell.
I’m hoping he won’t. Things do seem different this time. For one thing, I keep checking on him. Are the tips of his leaves turning brown or is that just my imagination? Do I need to buy special water for him? I joined r/houseplants to figure out how to take care of him. I bought a plant mister. I set a reminder on my phone to water him. I keep rotating him so that the same side doesn’t always face the sun.
Also, sometimes I go over to stroke the underside of his leaves and just look at him for a bit. (They’re fuzzy, alright? Also we’ve been in lockdown for a very long time and I’m starting to feel a bit frayed around the edges.)
I should probably tell you at this point that I ordered him some friends. Several of them, actually. Since I started writing this post a while back, I’ve started propagating my plants and ordering rare cuttings from random people on Instagram. My kids both have succulents in their rooms which they have proudly named.
I don’t know why I keep doing this: collecting things to look after, I mean. I thought two kids were enough, then we added two enormously spoiled guinea pigs into the family. Now plants. Why do I feel this need to have more things that depend on me in my life? It’s not as though I’m drowning in head space and free time that must be filled.
Maybe it’s a good sign. There is a need within me to care for, nurture, and love. No matter how busy and tired I am.
Or maybe it’s a sign that I find caring for humans so exhausting that I need to exercise that primal need to love something on an inanimate object that won’t answer me back or have opinions about things or be difficult in any way.
Hard to tell.
