I've been doing it all wrong

Dead plants, cat tattoos, and some in-between things

Plants I've killed.

In 48 years I’ve murdered over 100 houseplants.

I never intend to murder them, each plant comes pinned with hope and plans.

This time I’ll pay attention and not forget to water it.

This time I’ll feed it glowing green vitamins once a month.

This time I’ll notice when it starts to decline and tend to it.

And then they’d still die, and I’d feel damned and ridiculous.

“It’s a good thing I never had children,” I think, while tossing a crispy, dead fern into the woods.

For six months I stopped buying plants. I gave up. They were safer at Trader Joe’s or the plant store, where they’d flourish under practiced eyes. Why was I throwing money away again and again, slaying plants left and right? I could see trees from my office window, I was lucky to have that. I didn’t need a fleet of potted plants with shiny green leaves and smart stems that sought out sun. I wanted it, but I didn’t need it.

Then I saw a dozen wild, unfurling monstera with wide, green swiss-cheese leaves at Trader Joe’s for $12.99. I always wanted a monstera of my own, so I gave in. Three weeks later those leaves were rotting, black, and wet. I plunged a few watering globes into the soil, and added the electric green vitamins to the water. The plant died faster. I threw it into the woods.

A month ago the monsteras came back, the sirens of the Trader Joe’s plant department. I bought one. Again. Madness.

This time I tried something different. The moment the plant stopped flourishing, a full two weeks after landing in my office, I sought out help from an app with a name like Houseplant RX or Green Thumb Robot. I took pictures of the dying monstera, and the app said it was over watered and needed more sun.

I didn’t believe the app. What did it know? The plant was near a window. Plants need water. Ridiculous. I downloaded another app with the icon of a fern leaf. And then another. And then another.

They all said my monstera needed less water and more light.

Was the answer that simple all along? Less water? More light? I always assumed it was something complicated as I watched them die, frond by frond. I always assumed I just didn’t have a green thumb, whatever that meant, and was doomed to kill.

With great skepticism, I took the robot app’s advice. I ordered a dodgy-looking plant light and only watered once every few weeks. Within days, new leaves unfurled. Every leaf grew shiny and bright and climbed higher toward the light. Months have passed and the monstera is living its best life. It has friends, a couple ZZ plants, also from Trader Joe’s. They share the light, growing higher together every day.

Don’t give up. You just might need a little more light

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Before I Go

• Two weeks ago I had Marty the cat tattooed on my arm. My first tattoo. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t itch, it belongs here. The only downside: Marty didn’t notice.

Tattoo by the magical artist genius Hannah Kang of Vestige Tattoo.

• I’ve had no luck reading lately (a bad sign! always!) but I have started knitting again and watching Antiques Roadtrip, an old BBC series that is quaint and weird and uses copyrighted music without permission.

x, Rachel