A POST ABOUT HOUSE PLANTS

Alarmingly, it's been almost a year, and I still haven't killed off any of my houseplants yet. I suppose this means I have turned over a new leaf?

(No you didn't, you loved that.)

It started last year, after I unceremoniously killed off two Fiddle Leaf Figs in a row, followed by three succulents, in tragically quick succession. Fiddle Leaf Figs are one thing, but tell me, who kills off a succulent? The hell, Natalie. I decided then, officially, right there in my kitchen, that I simply could not live with myself if being myself meant routinely killing off house plants, because that is just not the type of home I run. Or anyway, that is not the type of home I want to run. It's like when you realize you're the type of person who should be composting, only you aren't composting, and so you start composting, thus fulfilling the prophesy? Or like that one time I finally started wearing penny loafers.

Right, so I started taking my houseplants very seriously, is the long story short of it. And it's very quickly become my favorite part of our home, that lo-o-o-o-ng row of houseplants that live along the windowsill in the living room.

Who am I kidding, I have only one room. THE room. Living in a loft is funny sometimes.

They are doing fairly well I am pleased to report, and now I will tell you my secret: I set an alarm for once a week. On my phone. To remind me to water my plants. 

Mondays. 

(Tee likes to have his fish bowl cleaned Sundays, because he's religious.)

I know this might sound somewhat pathetic. (I also have an alarm to remind me when it's bedtime, and when it's time to pick my kid up from school.) But there is no shame in my game and I am okay with admitting it: My brain resides fully inside a cracked iPhone. Eleven A.M, and I like to whisper sweet nothings to my green children as I go around splashing them with liquids. 

I still feel a twinge of regret over my poor Fiddle Leaf friends. I just wasn't ready for them. Fiddles are so finicky. They're like the peanut-allergy / gluten-sensitives of the houseplant world, and I was a peanut butter sandwich. It's a level of parenting I'll need to work up to. 

My plant babies are mostly arid types. A few cacti and some succulents, and some other spiny things I don't know much about except that they're pretty. Just a teeny tiny trickle, just once a week. Maybe a quarter cup at most. I'm pretty much rocking it.

But every mother has a favorite, and my favorite is Bob. Bob's a Bird of Paradise. I named him Bob for who knows why, but I really look forward to our weekly chats together. I fill the pitcher in the bathtub and give him a good long soak, all the while giving him compliments, filling him in on the important news of the day, that sort of thing. Bob tends to angle himself toward the sunlight and grow a little lopsidedly. I like to tell him it gives him character, but I usually give him a good twist to the left anyway, you know. He's never given me flowers but I try not to hold it against him.

I first met Bob on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope outside a store called The Bad Wife. The Bad Wife is a really stupid name for a grocery store. I just want that on the record. I went into The Bad Wife for the first time half expecting to find a grocery store dedicated to frozen TV dinners or something, but no, it was just a grocery store, for food. I don't know, it doesn't make any sense. Oddly I still find myself sorting through my feelings on the matter any time I walk past the place. But, Bob. From The Bad Wife. I hired the Bad Wife grocery guy to deliver Bob after his shift was over. Later that evening the guy showed up with Bob at the front door, all bushy and enormous and things (the plant, not the guy), and Brandon looked at me with his eyebrows all funny, because it turns out I forgot to mention that I'd bought it. Oops! Bad wife.

I expect Bob to keel over dead any minute now, but weirdly, it's one of my snake plants I've had the hardest time keeping healthy. Aren't snake plants supposed to be indestructible? Did I get the runt of the litter? The other two are doing great, but this one . . . I don't know what to do about my snake plant. I just can't figure him out. He's like that teenager slamming the door after stomping down the hallway (I don't have a hallway),"Nobody understands me!" I keep a set of kitchen shears handy so I can trim off the brown, curled dead ends that keep coming back, and I just know this upsets him. Do you think he thinks I'm trying to change him? Do you think he thinks I think he isn't enough on his own? Or maybe he's just acting out for attention? I make it a point to tell him something nice any time I think of it, which isn't that often. Which I suppose is part of the problem. 

Anyway, my friend Emily once wrote a post about her favorite houseplants. You can find it HERE. And I've just realized that I've written about my relationships to shrubbery before, and it's one of my very favorites. You can find that HERE.

The end.