Philosophy of Plants

One result of the pandemic and spending so much time at home has been my discovery that I can actually parent plants without killing them. I would attribute my improved green thumb to being older and wiser and having finally accepted that overwatering is both the biggest temptation and the biggest mistake. If I’m honest, though, I think just having better light is the real secret to my current success.

When I moved in here, I was all set to spend time taking care of myself after several years of having no home of my own. The pandemic was starting to wind up, and everybody else was staying home, too, discovering the joys (and pains) of enforced domestic life. I had already experienced a period of more or less involuntary solitude during several years of job-hunting. During that time, I worked on learning to make a proper biscuit, did some writing, and read a lot. I wouldn’t say that was a happy time, but I think I made the most of it.

This time, beginning in a new apartment with some difficult years behind me, I was happy to just concentrate on making a home. The first time I walked in here, I was able to picture just where everything should go and what it would look like once my things were here. I instantly knew where I wanted my Christmas tree to be, even though the holidays were months away. I also knew I wanted flowers on the porch.

I started my plant adventures with porch plants only: container flowers, and a pothos for an accent table that I ended up bringing inside at the end of the first summer. The pothos liked being outside but seemed to enjoy the indoors even more, and the flowers loved the porch. Slowly, as I developed a routine of caring for one plant, I’d add another one. The pothos went back outside for the second summer, along with more flowers, and I got an African violet to take its place in the living room. That was my one failure, as I couldn’t seem to figure out what it wanted before it gave up the ghost and wilted quite away.

The African violet didn’t seem to like too much of anything, either water or sun, and was extremely insulted by any moisture that might accidentally touch its leaves. My grandmother had African violets on her kitchen windowsill for years, and this had lulled me into thinking they were low maintenance, though after I thought about it, I realized hers must have had a northerly exposure. The stronger light here didn’t suit them (or might have if I hadn’t overwatered them first), but—oh, well. They were an impulse buy, so lesson learned. It was like trying to take care of a debutante.

I went about acquiring plants with some method in mind (usually): I did research to find out which ones would be likely to do well here without requiring too much fussing. If it was easy-care and I liked the way it looked, I’d go to the nursery center and look for one. Last year, I got a spider plant mixed in with a zebrina for the porch once I decided to give the pothos a permanent spot inside. When I brought it in last fall, I had to cut most of the zebrina out, but the spider plant is still thriving. After I rearranged some things to accommodate my washer, I got a snake plant for a bookcase that had been promoted to the dining room. Although I worried at first that it wouldn’t get enough light where it is, it has proved me wrong by insistently sending up new shoots.

While my assemblage is pretty modest, it’s added what I now know was a missing dimension in my past living spaces. The splashes of green give color to the rooms and serve as reminders that even in the mist of crisis, life goes on, patiently putting up shoots that grow by infinite degrees, making the most of all the light and water that come their way. I may never be a master gardener, but I think I have come to an understanding with my plant children. I give them what they need and then just try to stay out of the way.

Lightning Hits the Living Room

My winter cleaning project has turned out to be more all-encompassing than I thought--and that's an understatement. If you had told me a week ago that I'd be clearing out some of the items I've parted with, I wouldn't have believed you. Some of these things have been with me for quite a while, but once I started taking a closer look at them, I began to wonder why that was so. Was my regard for these items justified, outmoded, based on ideas I no longer believed in--or simply uninformed?

In some cases, I decided that objects I really didn't want any more were just taking up space, the way you do sometimes with impulse buys you later regret. In other cases, I had books and music that I had never read or listened to; when I started looking at it, I realized that some of it I would simply never get around to and some of it seemed to be different than what I had thought I was getting. That happens sometimes when you're researching a topic and cast a wide net, but it was also the case with items that were suggested to me by others or that I bought for class. I guess the result of developing a more discerning mythic eye is that you really do start to "see through" things; I could have saved myself some money by leaving those items in the store.

I cleared out a lot of albums and CDs, too, some of which I still listened to, and the story on that is a bit more complicated. I liked some of the music a lot but in the end it seemed to be taking up way too much oxygen. I looked at the cover art of some of my CDs and started to see a story that I had no idea was there before. Again, I've probably looked at those CDs dozens of times without really seeing them and was truly shocked when I started to see that what had seemed fairly inconsequential actually had an unnoticed layer of meaning. Some of the items went from being well-regarded and familiar to something that seemed quite alien in less than 30 seconds. I couldn't keep them anymore, and the sad thing is that I wondered why I had held onto them for so long.

The same thing happened with some family pictures, believe it or not. I saw some photos that my brother had posted on the Internet, and I suppose you would have to know him as well as I do, but I saw into them, or thought I did, with an acuity that was painful. It was like he was trying to tell me something. OK, mission accomplished. After that, I put away some family photos that I had out--it was probably time to do that anyway.

It's very difficult to admit that you just didn't see things, and this is especially true when you're an information professional who's used to assessing and judging things. It's easy to misjudge, though, when you only have partial information and no guidance other than your own understanding. If you're in the dark about things, you will make mistakes. I've often had the feeling that others know much more than I do (or believe they do) about things that concern me closely, which angers and distresses me more than I can say.

So it has been a week of clearing out space, both physical and psychic. When I went to bed on the evening of the day I had thrown out so much, I could hardly breathe. I literally felt that I was suffocating and wanted to go outside and run around in circles, though I doubted it would help. It felt like someone had just died--that overpowering feeling you have when something is lost that can't be recovered. I recently read a scene in a book in which a character's husband of many years died unexpectedly, leaving her to pick up the pieces. I hurried through that part because it was so painful, and here I was going through something not altogether different myself.

I often think that the first thoughts I have after waking up in the morning are probably the truest, and my immediate thought the next morning was that I had done the right thing and wouldn't regret it, no matter how empty my shelves and my desk seemed when I looked at them. They still look that way, several days later, but I have begun rearranging things to take up some of the empty space; I've let go of so many other things that I'm starting to get used to it. I was complaining in a previous post about having too much furniture in my living room, so maybe the desk will be the next thing to go now that it's almost bare. I always liked the living room better before it was here anyway.

I hope the room I'm making in my life will be filled with better things than have come my way recently. Even an optimist likes to have a little return on the faith now and then. I'll say further that some things are forgivable, but others are not--and I think anyone who's honest will agree with me.