Crazy Plant Lady

/ Diane Henders

I’ve mentioned before that I have a major addiction to houseplants; and like most addicts, I didn’t realize how bad it was until I started to recover.

(Okay, that’s a lie.  I’m not recovering; it’s just that the realtor has staged an intervention and I’m pretending to go along with it.  Shhh, don’t tell.)

I was actually feeling proud of myself because I’d gotten rid of my really big plants last year.  The nine-foot fig tree and the Norfolk Island pine had gone off to good homes, so the plants we dragged out to the Island last month were only in the four-to-five-foot range.

Our house seemed so empty without them – the place echoed.

But like any other addict, I still had an emergency stash.  I’d kept some smaller plants here, reasoning that they’d be a nice decorating touch when we spruced up the house to sell it.

Fast-forward to a couple of days ago when we were discussing home staging with the real estate agent, who assured us that renting new furniture and a truckload of tchotchkes will make a big difference in selling our house.

We haven’t had any staging consultants in yet, and the realtor gave us some examples of changes they might suggest.  After a few moments I spoke up cautiously.  “What about plants?”

“They’d all have to go.”

Go?

And exactly what did she mean by “all”?

I mean, really; I hardly have any plants left in here.  There’s only a Christmas cactus and a couple of anthuriums and a jade plant and nine African violets…

A little palm tree and a peperomia and a shamrock…

A sword plant and a Chinese evergreen…

A heartleaf philodendron and a couple of variegated corn plants and a few pothos vines…

Oh, and the big Boston fern, but it’s up high so it doesn’t count, right?

And I guess there are the four new hibiscus shrubs that we started from the trimmings of the bigger ones…

Yep, this is after we’ve moved out “most of the plants”.  I’m beginning to understand how much of a problem I have.

I can only imagine what an ugly scene it’ll be when the home stager tries to confiscate my last scrap of greenery:  Like an alcoholic who’s down to her final bottle, I’ll be alternately defensive, confrontational, and weepy.

Friends who live on the Island have assured me that I’ll begin to recover out there; that the ability to garden outdoors almost year-round will slowly cure me of my need to live in a jungle of houseplants.

I hope that’s true.

Meanwhile, can anybody hide an inch-plant for me, just for a little while?  It’s tiny, I promise…

* * *

P.S. The Never Say Spy audiobook is finally available – hooray!  It’s available through Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

49 thoughts on “Crazy Plant Lady”

  1. I have a brown thumb with plants..and I was really wondering if I was reading the whole thing wrong..that you meant outside your house…since you know that’s still your home..and wondering why anyone would want to get rid of all those plants…then…you wrote…about living in a jungle inside your house…ahahahaha…I do hope you have fun in your new home…and gardening outside 😛

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      • Out of curiosity, how will the damp climate affect your, er, gardening habits, for lack of a better term? Will your favorite vegetables still flourish there? The growing season is longer, of course, but is it as warm in the summer? As much useful daylight? What accommodations will you have to make?

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        • I think it’s going to be pretty close to paradise! We’re almost 10 miles inland so the summer temperatures will probably be almost the same as what we get here because of our altitude. When we were out on the Island this summer, it was +32C (90F) for a few days, which is unusually high for them, but it also is for us. The main difference will be that their frost-free season is close to 7 months long as opposed to 2.5 – 3 for us here in Calgary. It’s generally quite dry on the Island in the summer, so that won’t be much of a change for us, either.

          …According to our research anyway. Once we get out there and actually start gardening, time will tell…

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  2. I can’t grow plants; they just get sickly looking and refuse to live OR die. Having cats was the last straw; I’ve completely given up now. Wah. You, on the other hand … I’m impressed!!

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    • Thanks! 🙂 You’re right; cats make houseplants a considerably trickier proposition. My plants only started taking over the house after the last elderly feline had given up the ghost. All in all, the plants are easier – they don’t scratch the furniture, I only have to feed them once a week, and I never have to scoop a litterbox… but they don’t purr much and cuddling them kinda sucks.

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  4. I’m not good with plants at all, I love them, but i’m not good with them. My mum left me in charge of watering her plants when she went travelling for a few months, and for the first 6 weeks I had been watering a plastic plant she had along with the others. Also, about two months into her trip she asked me how the plant on the fridge was doing because that was a tricky one…gulp…there was a plant on the fridge?

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  5. I can’t believe they would make you move the plants out. It seems unnecessarily cruel. Hopefully, they can have temporary homes until you transport them to BC. Maybe some of them can move outside when you get there. Our biggest “problem” plant is a 9-1/2 foot cactus. If we ever have to move it we’ll need a team.

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      • Congratulations on the plant victory! That must’ve been a relief to hear. That lets you X-out *one* crisis off the list, anyway. 🙂

        Home stager. That’s still taking some getting used to. Then again, where we are, it’s either boom or bust. In the boom, some homes are sold even before the realtor can get the sign in the yard.

        Others are sold at the end of bidding wars THAT START AT THE FIRST ASKING PRICE. No kidding. Fist fights have broken out, and neighbors have called the police, I’ve heard. Average on-the-market time during the boom is measured in days, if not hours. Professional home stagers would starve.

        In the bust, you can’t GIVE houses away regardless of the make-overs, tricks, gimmicks, etc.

        Professional home stagers aren’t really a thing here. 🙂

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  6. I’m not good with plants at all, I am left in charge of my parents plants for 4 months when they go to Spain. I can’t say I kill them but generally they have to be steardy or they don’t make it.

    I bought the audible book and look forward to hearing it when I get a few hours tomorrow.

    Sorry I’ve been a tad absent from the last couple of weeks but one of the posts in book club made me really think so will comment on them later and read comments. And I was on holiday last week

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    • Hi Karen – I hope you had a great holiday! And thank you for buying the audiobook – I appreciate that! I hope you enjoy it. 🙂

      You’re doing well if you can keep somebody else’s plants alive for 4 months. I do okay with my own, but any time I’ve been left in charge of somebody else’s plants they don’t do so well. Maybe it’s something in the atmosphere of this house…

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      • OH MY GOD, I am loving the audio book. just started chapter 2, its the best lazy way to read a book, I love the way she describes John. and we have just crashed into Spider, ‘a bean pole’

        fallen in love with book 1 once again, you did good diane

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  7. Once you’re settled, you’ll be wondering where in hell all the plants came from! They seem to intuitively know when they’re loved and will come to your house to join their friends. Oh Wait! Those are weeds and they don’t give a crap about your growing abilities. Well at least that’s the way it seemed around my house.

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  9. I’ve caught my wife staring with desire at a potted plant at some retail venue and said, “What did that poor little thing ever do to deserve a death sentence?”

    Whereupon she will sigh wistfully and reply, “Yeah, I know.” Then she’ll pat the plant gently and affectionately and tell it, “Live, little one. Live and grow tall.”

    Then she’ll turn back to me, give me a look that could freeze the Caribbean solid in August, and we’ll continue on our merry way. Without the plant. Which is the important part. 😉

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  10. I have never had much of a green thumb, but I have managed to kill the unkillable. All it takes is trying to be a full time caregiver and work nearly full time and keep teaching the classes I ‘d always taught, and keep my own home and cat going too. If you forget to water the plants in your studio for months at a time because you haven’t had the time to even step into that room in months you can even kill a hibiscus and a philodendron. Two bad winters killed off even my unkillable perennial herbs and so I gave up on the pretense of trying to grow anything. Yes I even managed to kill my terregon, mint, and oregano.

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    • I’ve never been bitten by the house-plant bug, and thuh missus has finally just given up and declared herself the possessor of a ‘black thumb.’

      All of our ‘plants’ are either plastic, silk, or some combination thereof.

      Now, outside plants…well, that’s a different story. Or it used to be. Since the bod has started to need, er, shall we say, invasive intervention, well, I’ll just say that I’ve turned to writing for a creative release.

      Yeah, we’ll just go with that. 🙂

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    • Plants just don’t seem to die around here – instead they get bigger and bigger. And then I get some other little scrap of a plant that proceeds to get bigger and bigger. Et cetera.

      There have been a few notable exceptions, though, where a plant just doesn’t want to thrive. Then I set it outdoors to get “a breath of fresh air”… in the middle of winter. I think of it as euthanizing. 😉

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