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Plants And Me

There went another one yesterday to my great disappointment. I drowned another plant. While the plants and herbs out on my balcony are fine, my indoor one's are in a rotation of experimental trial and error. Some are doing great - my hassle free bamboo, my jasmine, aloe, and this tropical plant are great and have continued to be great. Other's on the other hand seem to only last in my keep much shorter than I'd like.

The first plant, a banana tree which I absolutely loved, rotted. Rookie mistake - I hadn't drilled holes in the pot it was in. Yep. New to indoor houseplants over here, I had no idea what you were supposed to do. And so it drowned in stagnant water and turned into mush right before my eyes. Disappointed, and having learned, I tried again with a different plant. And again it just didn't last very long before it too fell apart in its pot. About three or four months and then poof. So I tried again and brought it something else.

Then yesterday I woke up to my morning routine and flipped the lights on in my living room to find yet another plant which had actually been doing really well for about 5 months, turned brown and dropped about 60% of its gorgeous spiky leaves overnight. I whined about it all day. I was actually really upset about the whole thing. My friend suggested that it may be that my apartment is too humid. I only water my plants about once a week. I stick my finger in the soil and if it's not moist, then they get water. So having a humid apartment is the likely culprit because I have the heat on cranked high and all the windows closed most of the time. I'm wired for warm weather so the moment the temperature drops, my apartment turns into a warm escape. So this may be it.

Dear plants, I'm determined and committed to having our relationship be one of health and vibrancy rather than death and sadness.  I love you, please bare with me while I work this out and transform myself into a fluent master Gardner. So off I go now to get more plants except this time I won't transplant them right away but will let them hang out in their mini pots until they're used to my apartment and see how it goes. I'm determined to have an indoor jungle of thriving happy plants. And I'm determined to really be able to discern what my plants need and when they need. I don't yet speak plant fluently. I just need to figure out the right balance of what they each need and go from there.


These are my troubles right now. And for that I am so grateful.










