I have Brown Thumb Disease. I don’t just lack skill at growing houseplants; I kill them. As one acquaintance said, I’m a houseplant assassin. First, it was African violets. I was a 30-something-year-old with the duties of a pastor’s wife, three young sons, college classes in English with reams of reading and writing, Sunday School teacher, church pianist, leader of a small women’s singing group, and Ruby’s neighbor, a woman with African violets running out of her ears.
As I look back, I could blame Ruby for launching my 50-year-career as a houseplant killer. She was a forceful campaigner for African violets, had six or seven colors and some shades between. She insisted I take some. I resisted, but Ruby persisted.
“Easy to raise,” she said, “and perpetual bloomers.”
So, I accepted six small pots of pinks and lavenders. An immediate problem arose. “African violets prefer indirect sunlight,” Ruby said. “North and east windows are best.”
My two east windows were open to “inquiring” neighbors, so I kept those curtains closed tight. North windows were in my boisterous sons’ bedrooms—no place for blooming flowers. I had a small west window over the kitchen sink with a so-so view that I didn’t want to obstruct, so I settled on a south window in our tiny breakfast room. Not a good idea, but the best I could do.
“What do I do now?” I asked Ruby. “Never over-water,” she said, “just once a week if soil is completely dry. Fertilize every two weeks in spring and summer, but nothing in fall and winter. That’s it,” she said. “Low maintenance. Easy, easy, easy.”
Neighbors in big Midwestern cities with too many African violets sometimes lie, I discovered, even good Christian ones.
All went well for a few weeks; then, one day, several bottom leaves were mushy. A magazine from the grocery store (this was long before Google) said it might be root rot from too much water. So, I watered less. Next came brown and brittle leaves—too little water the magazine said. Later, leaves curled under—too much sunlight. Too much, too little, too bright. Those violets hounded and harassed me for months.
When I finally showed Ruby my suffering plants, she grinned, patted me on the arm, and said, “That’s okay, dearie; not everyone can raise African violets.” Ruby was a good soul, but I wish she had told me earlier I looked like an African violet assassin. I moved the six little pots out of the window and into our dark pantry. No sunlight, no food, no water quickly led to their complete demise and burial in the trash can.
There have been many other houseplant deaths over these 50 years—ficus tree, dieffenbachia, philodendron, asparagus fern, even peace lilies and mother-in-law tongues, which most people say are un-killable. They are wrong. Two Christmas cactuses from my mother—who never killed a houseplant in her life—would never bloom at Christmas or any other holiday. They shriveled up and met their Maker.
My longest survivor was a very large Areca palm (bamboo palm) that grew to five feet tall and lived 12 years. I loved that Areca. It stuck with me through thick and thin, including three moves,
one of which was north for 350 miles. The Areca asked so little of me, just an occasional good watering when it began to droop, a word of praise for its faithfulness, and my human touch now and then to trim off an errant stem or a brown frond or two.
But after the third move, the Areca grew weary and faltered. Many brown fronds and stems showed up and no new green ones. By then I had Google and the Web. One plant expert said the average houseplant lives from two to five years. My Areca was above average. Another said, depending on the type of plant and the care they receive, some plants could live upwards of 20 years. I had never been a doting caregiver, so I knew the end was near.
In the fall, three months after our move, I emptied my declining Areca onto the creek bank 50 yards behind our house. It came out of the big pot easily. I set it in an upright position on the creek bank and walked away. For weeks, from our breakfast room window, I could see Areca’s puny fronds turn brown, wave gently in the breeze, and grow punier and punier. During winter rains, it lost its footing, tilted toward the creek, and washed away in brown water.
Now I have no living houseplants. Just two weeks ago I bought fresh flowers for a brunch we hosted, and my husband Bill often brings home a small mix of yellow, red, and white blossoms from a store where he buys his apples. We like live plants, but I can’t grow them, so cut flowers must do.
Back in February, a neighbor offered Bill her thriving Christmas poinsettia leftover, and he declined. “Brenda kills houseplants,” he told her. He is right; I do. So, I have a fake snake plant in my office that looks forever and a day like a live one. And in our family room, a pot of fake paperwhite narcissus fooled my friend. Their immortality heartens me because I know I can’t kill them.
Strangely, my outdoor plants thrive. We have knock-out roses along the front of our house, a limelight hydrangea, six golden mops, a Japanese willow, a Himalayan cedar, two burning bushes, and a few small leaf holly bushes. Bill and I prune the roses, the hydrangea, and the round Japanese willow and nip the extra growth from a few of the others. In late spring, Bill rakes and mulches. And they live, even though I touch them, breathe on them, and tend them: water them in drought, deadhead their withered blossoms in the summer and fall, and prune them in late winter.
I love my outdoor plants. Genesis reminds me they are a gift from the Lord. The Lord God, Creator of all things, saw the bareness of Eden, so He instructed the earth to sprout vegetation. I like the sequence: He made plants, then He made humans to love and tend plants for both beauty and food (Genesis 1:11-12, 29). That was good, He said. Sequoia trees and almost invisible turnip seeds. Mangroves and artichokes. Methuselah, the bristlecone pine in eastern California that is 4,853 years old according to ring data. My short-lived African violets.
It interests me that the Lord mentions grass, grain, trees, plants, and seeds five or six hundred times in the Bible. Sometimes, it’s about plants to eat. But, most often, He uses plants metaphorically or symbolically to teach us truths about ourselves as humans and about Himself.
Remember the vine the Lord grew (and then withered) to chastise Jonah for his lack of compassion for the pagan Ninevites. Job spoke of hope and resurrection using a dead stump that can sprout, bud, and put out new branches at only the scent of water (14:7-14). Job meant that mankind dies, but the Water of Life makes him live again. Paul often used plant metaphors, as in the nine fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23.
Jesus used three plant parables in Matthew 13: the sower, the weeds, and the mustard seeds. And who can forget His graphic analogy in John 15, where Jesus is described as the vine and we are the branches, alive and growing in vital and life-giving relationship to Him. But cut off from Him, we “can do nothing.” Peter, James, and the Psalmist used plants to teach spiritual truths. Isaiah called us the Lord’s “planting…his oaks of righteousness.”
Jeremiah said it best: the one who trusts the Lord is like a tree planted by water, that spreads its roots…has green leaves…and always bears fruit (17:7-8). I want to be that tree,
the Lord’s tree that stays always green and bears fruit.
About the Writer: Brenda Evans lives and writes in Ashland,
Kentucky. You may reach her at beejayevans@windstream.net.
