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I can’t keep plants alive. I am not a gardener. Don’t even try to mistake me for having any kind of slightly green thumb. I don’t know how I have kept dogs and small children alive for years, but that plant we picked up from Bunnings like last week is already dying. Ha. Kidding. I don’t pick up plants from Bunnings. I’m realistic enough to know it will end badly. For the plant.
Right now, indoor plants and succulents and stuff are really popular (and look absolutely gorgeous), but I just can’t get excited about them. It’s not them. It’s me.
Watering plants does not excite me. In fact, that’s a bloody understatement. I just plain forget. Also, I hate having to figure out stuff like how much water certain plants need. I don’t know how the hell to make the whole “it needs this percentage of sunlight and thrives best in that climate, and it flowers in this season and it needs that blend of potting mix/soil/sand/dirt blah blah” thing work.
The only luck I’ve had is when we bought natives that I’ve actually seen at the beaches around here. Plants that technically thrive with very little care and can handle the natural environment we actually live in. Even then, if I’m totally honest, my husband takes care of them when they do require maintenance.
We got some azaleas after our trip to Korea and Japan in 2014. So that’s nice. They’re alive. Again, that has nothing to do with me. It’s just luck and my husband remembering they exist every now and then.
I think it just comes down to the fact that I am absolutely not interested. I will admire other people’s plants and gardens. I lose my shit when I see pretty trees and leaves (the Little Miss does too which is absolutely adorable). I will glance wistfully at succulents at a market stall on a weekend. I appreciate the good that plants do for our environment and our planet. I just do not care to cultivate anything of my own.
I have reached a point where it just feels cruel, like plant murder, if I try to take a plant home. I mean, what other living thing would you ever not care about anywhere near enough for it to stay alive? I tell you what. If Kate Hudson bought me a love fern like in the movie How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days, our love would die. I mean, I’d lose her in probably 5 days tops, due to gardening negligence, which would make the movie really short. I am a bit confused as to why I just cast myself as the Matthew McConaughey character just then. You ever feel like you took an analogy too far? Me either.
*cough cough*
You know how some people plant trees or roses or something else truly beautiful to remember a lost loved one? I LOVE that gesture. I am always moved by that. But I am also filled with a feeling of, oh shit I could never do that – I’d kill the plant/tree and everyone would think I never cared about the person’s memory – that would get awkward reeeeeal fast. Maybe I should just build a park bench or some shit. Actually, maybe I should just be in charge of taking a plaque to an engraver and just ask someone to attach it to a bench somebody else made (for safety reasons), in a location where you can sit and look at the pretty trees that somebody else keeps alive.
I think the moral of that story is nobody I know is allowed to die – ESPECIALLY if they want to leave me their plants. I clearly couldn’t handle it. On so many levels.
Is some part of my soul missing?
Am I lazy? Am I just uncool? Is it just not what speaks to who I am? All of the above?
