Shawn L. Bird

I’m admiring my Christmas cactus and its green companions in my living room, and wondering if my reputation as a plant killer is truly deserved.  I recently received two plants- a red shamrock and a lemon geranium- they’re new and looking like gawky pubescent boys at the moment, but aside from those, the green things are looking rather healthy in the room at the moment.  There are a 5 year old African violet that has flowered beautifully for me three times, a ‘corn plant’ that is 8 feet hight, that I got in 1989, and very contented spider plant that is almost as old.  So.  I’m not a complete loser in the horticulture department if I can keep plants alive for over twenty years.

My mother can make anything live.  She brings plants back from death and has a garden that is the admiration of the neighbourhood.  Her basement is full of intriguing orchids.  Maybe I’m considered a bad plant person, next to her rather impressive talents.  Plants can survive at my house. They just have to be the right plants.

I would not venture to own something tender and finicky.  Plants at my house have to be like my children- tough and independent!  I provide the basics when I remember- water every week or two, fertilizer in the spring.  Usually.  The plants that make it here like to dry out completely between waterings.  That’s usually a given.  They have to be plants that don’t mind being ignored.  Independent plants that reward me by a show of flowers just as they’re dying are very helpful.  I understand that means they’re desperate.  I’m very good with the desperate.

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This makes me ponder the essence of reputation.  If I am considered a black thumb, just because in comparison with my mother I’m rather pathetic, it’s kind of unfair.   Sometimes we get reputations we don’t deserve.  Sometimes, we’ve been given tasks (or plants) that simply don’t suit our skills.  If we had the right ones, we’d be quite successful with them.  We can’t be compared with anyone else.  We have to be assessed for our own abilities and given tasks that suit who we are.  If we want to change, we can learn, and take on larger tasks later.  Celebrate reality.  Make the task suit the skills and desires that exist now.