Plant Suicide

I find it funny and somewhat ironic that my favorite color is green, because I am a plant killer, a destroyer of all things green (guac included!). This is not something that I am at all proud of, but it is a truth that I must admit not only to myself but to anyone who might wish to present me with a precious bit of nature. Just know that I am very grateful for the gift and a great admirer of the beauty of plants, but it will die, eventually and probably very soon after you give it to me.

When it comes to plants, my thumbs are nonexistent.

Its heartbreaking really that Will and I are unable to enjoy the simple pleasures of nature inside our cottage [NOTE: bugs, you do not count! We do not want your nature!]. Not only am I lethal to plants, but our panther, Lottie, likes to eat them. She shreds their leaves and digs up their roots. She's just as bad as me. We reject nature in the Jackson household, and it breaks my heart!

I have always loved plants and have always been surrounded by them. My grandmother was Mother Earth to me. Her house overflowed with African violets, Christmas cacti and vines with flowers and some without that encased her porches. She could grow anything, anywhere and at any time. She passed on her neon green thumbs to my mother, who has an entire green room (actual color of the walls) filled to the brim with potted plants, hanging plants and expansive views of her lush gardens that surround her very green lawn.

This is just one of my mother's gardens.

Sadly, this affinity for growing things, well, really just the ability to keep plants alive, was not passed on to me.

I remember once that my grandmother gave me two of her purple African violets to have as my very own. I brought them home proudly and put them in the place of honor on my bedside table. Those darn flowers lost their blooms within days, never to bloom again!

Interestingly enough, it has always been a secret dream of mine to own a little cottage right outside of a city somewhere with lush and overgrown gardens--not weedy gardens, but full and flowering gardens. I don't want a lawn. I have always envisioned my brood of wild children that I will someday have playing hide and seek amongst the stalks of glads, behind a line of sunflowers or even in the middle of a purple butterfly bush. There will be fairies and gnomes and everything magical about nature there in that garden to play with them and ignite their imaginations. If they need space to run, well, there will be a patch of green somewhere in there, but never a lawn. Lawns are so boring, so suburban. Lawns are wasted space if you ask me.

Some place like this.


Now, how is someone who kills plants and is without thumbs going to accomplish such a magical garden?





I am going to hire a gardner, and a damn good one at that.