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Get a plant around me and even if it's half-dead it'll suddenly start sprouting branches and baby leaves. I noticed this early on because a plant-loving aunt gave me something in a pot every Christmas, and no sooner would the new arrival join the growing jungle in my room than it'd be fixing to bust out of its pot. I must have a too-green thumb. Maybe my brain waves are in harmony with those of the vegetative state.
The story of each plant execution begins with the ringing of the doorbell. When I was around eight, the plant-aunt ordered a red poinsettia to be delivered for my December birthday. I'd never had anything sent to me from a florist before. The poinsettia was glorious, so giant it was more of a flaming bush than a mere potted plant.
I proudly placed this mother of all poinsettias in a central spot of honor among my many other plants. Flash forward 10 years. . .I'm 18 and the blessed thing is still stretching its branches toward my bed, no shit! Damned if it doesn't even crank out the occasional bloom, even though it's spindly and rains down yellow leaves on my hot-pink shag rug.
There in the privacy of my rosy bedroom I made my virgin decision to kill -- not just my jumbo poinsettia but all the plants that had managed to hang on, swamping two card tables. It horrifies me to admit that I simply stopped watering them until they withered into a ghost platoon, probably sending out little gasping vibes to my previously hospitable brain in the process.
My next execution was smaller-scale and indirect. After pining throughout college for a guy who was taken, I was astonished to answer the door bell one night and find him standing there smiling shyly and holding out, like a bouquet, a bushy pot plant. I never quite figured that gesture out, although I'd like to think it was in acknowledgement of the romance we might've had.
Of course the plant absolutely thrived, despite the weak winter light and my occasional desperate attempts to catch a buzz by stripping its leaves and cooking them in a frying pan, which doesn't work, BTW. I loved it and it loved me, but the day came when I had to graduate and move back home.
By this point the pot plant was the massive descendant of the colossal poinsettia. I decided to bank on my parents' ignorance, and sure enough, my mother innocently placed it among her plants in a sunny spot where it grew even more lush, an emerald-green giant gleaming with the potential to get you dangerously twisted.
I eventually moved to Richmond, taking the train, which prohibited pot-plant transference. My mother was glad to accept such a beautiful plant as my parting gift, and all was well until about two weeks later, when I received a call.
"Honey? Was that a pot plant you gave us?"
"What?! Oh my gosh, Mom, I don't know."
"Well, your stepbrother stopped by and said it was, so we threw it out."
That rat! I hated the thought of my luscious buzz bush lying broken and expiring in a metal can. Its death joined those of the other plants in a dark corner of my conscience.
After the whores who lived across the hall from my Charlotte condo moved out, some blonde guy moved in, but I never met him until the day my door bell rang and there he stood. After introducing himself he announced he was moving and asked if I wanted the planter he was holding
It was one of those shallow planters in a flimsy woven basket that had probably originated in a hospital lobby, with a yellow bow stuck in it. Small, indistinguishable plants, several partly brown, huddled in clumps.
"Ah, gee, thanks!" I said, thinking, why me?
I considered tossing it the minute I closed the door but kept it instead, and sure enough the darned thing found new life, its dull little clusters soon turning glossy and crowding each other out of their container.
For five years it took up precious counter space. When it was time to move to my first house, I granted myself permission to give it the old heave-ho, my heart hardened since it was the ghost of a get-well gift I never received in the first place.
I now own exactly one house plant that I make stay on the porch year-round, yet even in winter I see it, gaily waving its flourishing limbs at me through the window.
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