It’s spring. Everything’s blooming, although we’re having a rather rainy couple of weeks in sunny Los Angeles. In the midst of the rain and trying to get my apartment finished and the bookkeeping I have to do before Friday, I spent about an hour yesterday selecting plants and a couple of new pots at Home Depot. Spent a little too much money on the pots, but I really like them. I buy the smallest plants they have because they’re the cheapest, and I don’t feel so bad when I kill them, which I do with alarming frequency. Oh, I’d love to say I have a green thumb, but it’s more black than green, kind of a dark olive-gray. But I enjoy plants, and surprisingly, I like playing in the dirt. I think I’ve figured out that when there are no worms, slugs, or snails involved, I’m much happier with said dirt. And the only bugs I have to deal with in potting soil are the stupid plant mites. I’m not fond of dirty fingernails and cleaning up afterwards is not really fun, either, but the couple of hours I spent repotting older plants and potting the new ones was…soothing.
I need something to take care of, given that my girlfriend is out of town for 2 weeks and when she’s not around I don’t leave my house or talk to anyone. So…plants. I haven’t started talking to them, yet. I have had that song from Little Shop of Horrors going through my head all day, though.
Hopefully they’ll live for a while. They’re mostly palms and tropicals but I did get a hydrangea because I missed having them (they lined the exterior wall of our old apartment, you know, where we liked our neighbors and never had to call the cops and stuff). I do have one plant that’s managed to stay alive, despite my best efforts, for around 4 1/2 years. Even when I neglect him for weeks and he gets all wilted he seems to always come back like a champ. My father is jealous – he has the same type of plant but it never looks as healthy as Bob. I bought Bob some friends to put in his pot and fill in some bare spots so hopefully he’ll stay happy and healthy.
Incidentally, did you know drilling holes into ceramic causes an unholy screeching sound? I think I did, given that I sawed through some tiles in my aunt’s bathroom a few years ago, but I’d blissfully forgotten the experience. So when I drilled drainage holes into 2 of the pots yesterday, my ears rang for about 5 hours afterwards. Nice. I have to drill the holes, though. I tend to drown plants. I try to be disciplined and not overwater, but I forget or they start to look droopy or somesuch thing and I think, “Hey, I’ll just give it a little bit more water…” and before you know it, drowned, dead plant.
Here’s to keeping all the plants alive for a while, and oxygenating and cleaning the air in my house without having to turn on my air filters.
