what houseplants teach me about life…and other things.

when it comes to my #CrazyPlantLady journey, i’ve definitely had my moments of CRAZY.

i’ll just say that i’ve purchased, murdered, and repurchased a plant or seventy-five. unwilling to admit defeat, downright refusing to let some leafy little beast get the best of me. i became a master of ignoring all the signs of unfulfillling, one-way relationship yo-yos and still, i persisted.

i wanted that “jungalow” look that i drool over on the ‘Gram and, dammit, my little house of no windows and rotten light was going to sustain this Jurassic Park level of vegetation whether it wanted to or not.

Spoiler alert: the house went with “not” and I had a lot to do with the fact that my house was the place so many plants went to die in that three-year span.

if you’re a fan of plants or a serial killer of plants, there’s life lessons you’re learning and you might not even know it.

but i know it now. oh, do i know it.

walk with me a minute….

1. not too much and not too little

technically, i’m talking about that brain-smashing, soul-crushing tightrope that the entire business of watering plants really is.

too much and they die. too little and they die. the kicker? the majority of symptoms of either one are identical, so any help you seek online will likely point to “you’re either or over or underwatering.” gee, thanks.

for folks like me, we tend to err on the “i’m going to love the crap out of you by drowning you with water four times a week.”

turns out plants don’t really like that.

sometimes, i want a plant because i want something to fuss over and show affection to with the business end of a watering can and it hardly ever works well for me.

i’ll double back with a similar plant and try the opposite approach. i’ll ignore that poor little soul until its just a crispy memory of what it could have been.

i’m either drowning them or i’m turning them into chlorophyll-infused plant jerky.

think about it a minute and i’m sure it’ll click.

everything we do is a fine line between too much and too little and that sweet spot, where plants and our lives flourish, is where the best things happen.

adjust. try new approaches. learn what works and do that.

too much? too little? keep trying…you’ll find the sweet spot eventually.

2. admit defeat and move on

my friend marsha owns a flower shop in our little town and she sells the coolest plants in the tri-state area (is that really a thing, the tri-state area? i hear it so often, yet know the sum total of zero people who actually live in one.)

in the story i tell myself in my head, there’s no plant marsha can’t befriend and bring the best out of. however, in the course of one mundane conversation in her shop, one she probably doesn’t even remember, she changed my life.

we were talking about how long i keep dead/dying plants around hoping the situation will make some miraculous 180 and this little plant that obviously hates me will suddenly see the error of it’s ways and love me back.

‘not me,’ marsha says with a laugh. ‘the second a plant shows me it can’t hang at my house, it’s gotta go. can’t let it make me feel bad about myself or doubt my abilities.’

wait…what? you mean we don’t have to continuously torture ourselves with people or relationships or jobs that aren’t working out? imagine that.

if you don’t jive with a plant, you don’t jive with a plant. cut it loose and start again. same goes for shitty jobs and shitty situations you thought would be something different.

cut it loose and start again. brilliant, and definitely great training for cutting other things out of your life that just don’t work.

3. find your type and love them hard (just not with water, please)

i haven’t exactly mastered this last one yet, but i’m a work in progress and the bottom line is you’ve gotta know your type and stick with that.

in plants, it means i have to walk on past those gorgeous peperomias and those flashy begonias. they die every time.

more important than refusing to stick with a plant long past the warning signs is the wisdom to leave that plant to another in the first place.

i’m too needy for the plump leaves of the watermelon peperomia. gimme two weeks and the base of the stalks will start turning a really depressing black and both the plant and i know there’s no coming back for either of us. root rot. death. despair. guilt. shame. new plants. new rot. wash, rinse, repeat.

when it comes to plants, understand your type long before you make your purchase.

i tell my kids this all the time, too, when it comes to making new friends, playing new sports and looking for what’s next.

surprise is great and can lead to fun things, but at the end of the day, know your strengths and play to that.

my poor older daughter has a knack for picking friends who require a lot of freedom, while deep down at heart, she’s a bit more of the clingy type than she cares to admit. i tell her every time we talk about this that she needs to understand her expectations in friendships and choose from there.

clingy? find another clingy soul that wants nothing more than to text back and forth and share memes well into the wee hours. need more freedom in your friendships? find a friend who bounces between lots of groups but always circles back eventually to check back in. neither are the wrong type of friend as long as you know what you need and what you’re getting going in.

as far as plants go, i’m a pothos kind of girl. it’s been a long few years learning that and we’ve lost some good planty souls along the way, but there’s something about the pothos personality that communicates perfectly with me.

need water? she’ll wither a bit and get a little wrinkly on the stems. no biggie. one waterbath later and she’s right as rain.

watering too much? no worries. she’ll yellow a couple leaves and kill them off in fair warning before i overwater her past the point of no return.

as i type this, i watch my drooping snake plant in the far corner and admit that while i’m learning these lessons (stop. overwatering. the. damn. plants), i still have so far to go.

lucky for me, i’ve got a plant shop in town to cater to all my instagram inspiration—or to reign me back in and remind me that i’ve already slaughtered four spider plants in the past year and maybe i ought to introduce myself to that nice fern who loves the watering and the misting and the primping.