I have never been very good with plants. You would think I’d be a better gardener with my intense appreciation for trees and birds and all the time I spend drawing and painting from nature, but I am not. It’s not that I don’t try. I have a garden that is usually limping along and a few (okay, just a couple) of houseplants that have either been with me for ten years or are brand new and still lively, or on their way out.
The few that I have managed to keep alive for a long time are sturdy as hell. They are succulents, which I seem to be good at. I love succulents and the desert climate they represent and which I happen to live in. But I also love the woods and am very fond of ferns. So I am always trying to grow a fern in my bathroom and it never works.
The last one I bought is still hanging there, with two leafless twigs sticking up out of the dirt. I am still watering it, more from a sense of guilt at this point than any real hope that somehow it’s going to fight its way back from the brink. When I bought it, it was luscious and bright, busting out of its pot like it had needed a transplant a year ago but the florist had not gotten around to it. So being an intuitive gardener, I bought a bigger pot for it and transplanted the vivacious fern as soon as I got home. Two weeks later it was wilting badly and the leaves were turning brown at a speedy rate, so I called the florist for help (and sort of to complain). They said transplanting it was a mistake, that the fern likes being crowded, but that it should be okay with some extra care.
Uh oh.
“Put it out at night in the cool air, soak it every two weeks for thirty minutes, and give it something strong like ‘Thrive’.”
“’Thrive?’”
“It’s plant food that will give it a real boost. You can get it at the hardware store and I’m sure the plant will do fine. It’ll come back.”
Thrive. I put it on my to do list that the next time I was at the hardware store I would look for it. And I did, but I guess Home Depot was not what she had in mind. Whenever I found myself at a hardware store I would idly peruse the gardening section for it, but I never went up to the counter and asked, nor did I look on the internet to try and find it. I guess it was what the fern really needed because despite my taking it out at to breath the cool night air and soaking it once in a while, it never did come back. It held on for about a year, maybe more. But now it is just the two leafless twigs.
I was looking at my to do list today where it still says, “Buy ‘Thrive’ at hardware store” when it struck me. The color green, and why I never made the trip to buy the ‘Thrive’ to save the plant that was dying in my bathroom. Because this is a place where I like to fall short: The care of my plants. It’s one of the areas in my life where I need some improvement. Another one is managing my money. The color green hit me as the through line to ‘Thrive.’
I bathed in the color green this summer, constantly surrounded by it in Vermont for a month. The trees, the fields and the garden there are vibrant all summer long. The heart chakra is green and green is the vibrational color of love. As I drove along country roads walled in by the woods chlorophyll-rich outer layer I tried to feel the connection to my heart. Hmmmm. Green is the color of love and plants and money and I could use some extra love in my garden and in my bank account. And yet I resist. I resist the garden just as I resist the budget and the bills and I resist buying a bottle of something called “Thrive.” Maybe I am still a little afraid of thriving myself.
I am at a place in my life where it is really time to shit or get off the pot. It is time to get to those places where I habitually neglect what needs to happen. It is time to pull some weeds. It is time to dig into the hardened soil in my backyard. It time to plant seeds and lovingly water them. And it is time to make some changes in my life. Time to sit down and make decisions about what our priorities really are and where we want to be in ten years. And I need to go to the damn hardware store and buy some “Thrive.” Maybe I’ll spray it on myself.
