These Plants Keep Breakin' My Heart
There's one thing that couldn't be truer: most plants are very hard to keep alive. I can't, but mostly don't want to, tell you the dollar amount I've spent on fauna that is now enriching the soil with its deadness. My dead-ass former plants are probably soil in pots that hold very alive plants - likely in some yuppie's condo on Franklin Blvd. Yeah HE knows how to keep it alive.
What all this bio-death is doing is releasing oxygen...great, but I'm convinced there's psychological damage done to a plant owner who keeps losing 'em left and right. I've got one motherfucker hanging in there alright, and to me, he is like the hiker who chopped his own arm off to escape from under that boulder. I can't fathom why he's still alive. For all my supposed shitiness as a plant keeper, he's trucking along, shedding a few brown leaves here and there sure, but keeping it long and flowing in the corner of my room. I'm serious - if anyone dared spray some Windex on him for laughs, I'd start wailing on them like a Milwaukee Adult League hockey coach. And then it'd get REAL weird between us.
There's one case that breaks my heart, see. You all know those classic bamboo-style plants that every schmuck has on his office desk, the kind you can get at IKEA for like a dollar. They sometimes twist around, but mostly they're just straight up bamboo and leaves. Well, you can keep those things alive under the hood of a car, I swear. No water for weeks, occasional light, and some breeze, and that thing's sittin' pretty for a year at least, right? Not mine. I made a mortal cultivation faux pas and put it outside my window in the dead of October. Now, mind you, this is LA, so it MAYBE got to 50 degrees. But it was enough to deal a deadly blow to my lil' bamboozler. By the next morning, that thing looked like E.T. when they pulled it out of the creek. Literally. It was milky brown, wet, and it was mewing like a semi-deranged lamb. I brought it quickly inside, wrapped a towel around it, and pointed my 100 watt lamp in its direction. A week later it looked mildly better, and by January we were looking at a brand-spanking new plant. I thought the Curse of the Plant Widower was finally over.
Until yesterday.
Inexplicably, my bamboo plant is dying. I'm at a complete loss. Its stalks are brown and mushy, the leaves limp and depressing. There's water in there, sure, but that hasn't helped or hurt matters since the beginning. The only thing I can think of is that it has lost the Will to Live. Can they do that? And if so, why put yourself through this mental anguish anymore? These things are like people that die in front of us all the time, and we're just supposed to keep burying them? Fuck that. I'm not buying anymore. I got one, and he's getting it done. When he dies, I'm swearing them off for good. No room in this heart for any more breakin'.
What all this bio-death is doing is releasing oxygen...great, but I'm convinced there's psychological damage done to a plant owner who keeps losing 'em left and right. I've got one motherfucker hanging in there alright, and to me, he is like the hiker who chopped his own arm off to escape from under that boulder. I can't fathom why he's still alive. For all my supposed shitiness as a plant keeper, he's trucking along, shedding a few brown leaves here and there sure, but keeping it long and flowing in the corner of my room. I'm serious - if anyone dared spray some Windex on him for laughs, I'd start wailing on them like a Milwaukee Adult League hockey coach. And then it'd get REAL weird between us.
There's one case that breaks my heart, see. You all know those classic bamboo-style plants that every schmuck has on his office desk, the kind you can get at IKEA for like a dollar. They sometimes twist around, but mostly they're just straight up bamboo and leaves. Well, you can keep those things alive under the hood of a car, I swear. No water for weeks, occasional light, and some breeze, and that thing's sittin' pretty for a year at least, right? Not mine. I made a mortal cultivation faux pas and put it outside my window in the dead of October. Now, mind you, this is LA, so it MAYBE got to 50 degrees. But it was enough to deal a deadly blow to my lil' bamboozler. By the next morning, that thing looked like E.T. when they pulled it out of the creek. Literally. It was milky brown, wet, and it was mewing like a semi-deranged lamb. I brought it quickly inside, wrapped a towel around it, and pointed my 100 watt lamp in its direction. A week later it looked mildly better, and by January we were looking at a brand-spanking new plant. I thought the Curse of the Plant Widower was finally over.
Until yesterday.
Inexplicably, my bamboo plant is dying. I'm at a complete loss. Its stalks are brown and mushy, the leaves limp and depressing. There's water in there, sure, but that hasn't helped or hurt matters since the beginning. The only thing I can think of is that it has lost the Will to Live. Can they do that? And if so, why put yourself through this mental anguish anymore? These things are like people that die in front of us all the time, and we're just supposed to keep burying them? Fuck that. I'm not buying anymore. I got one, and he's getting it done. When he dies, I'm swearing them off for good. No room in this heart for any more breakin'.
posted by Smidge at 9:57 PM
2 Comments:
I feel your pain. I have always, without a thought, easily grown plants inside and out. I had an amazing vegetable garden once, lots of herbs, and lots of lush green plants inside. Then I moved here, 4 years ago. Nothing grows -- not even the nigelia that self-seeds so easily. Inside -- it's like everything rots. I just don't know what it is about this place.
I was recently introduced to a special plant when I went home back east over Christmas called an "air plant". I don't know the scientific nomenclature, but it seems to survive on little or no water. Considering it's hard to sometimes keep a cactus alive, it might be the only hope left.
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