Not so much a green thumb but more of a bruised one

2005-10-24 - 1:46 p.m.

My history with plants has been pretty sketchy over the years.

I was attracted to all things green and growing from as early as I can remember. That I can recall, my first experiment with growing something on my own was a mung bean plant. We started them in school and eventually got to bring them home to continue to grow after the school year was over. My little mung bean was all sorts of happy and looked to me a bit like the start of Jack's beanstalk. When I went to visit my grandparents I left it out back to catch some sun. Apparently there was a big storm while I was gone that trashed my poor little mung bean, hurled it off its perching spot at the top of our fence, and left it for dead. Poor little mung bean. Casualty number one.

My next victim was a tiny little cactus plant I decided would be perfect next to the hamster cage in my bedroom. The combination of the hamster and cactus felt like a real desert theme to me. I don't know if I watered it too much or too little, or if it just hated the light it got, or maybe it just hated me or the hamster. I don't know. Maybe it was suicidal and decided life in a 3" pot in a little girl's bedroom just wasn't worth living. In any case, it became a prickly, whithered mess in no time.

My third attempt was a small garden of my own. My father dug up a circle around a tree in the back yard. Mom helped me pick out some easy flowers to start with. I remember impatiens and petunias for sure. There might have been one other type, but it might just have been the two. This lasted much better. I never cared much for the petunias, but the garden actually lived and thrived for the most part. I figured I'd gotten a green thumb at last.

Foolish me. Over the years I've managed to kill off flowers, herbs and all manner of houseplants. A few here and there have thrived and been as healthy as my weeds, but for the majority it's a short-term life on death row once they find their way into my shopping cart. I've improved a touch but I currently have two dead plants stashed in my basement once I finally gave up on them and one struggling for life in my guest room. I heard on the radio gardening show Saturday that I've been taking care of my lucky bamboo wrong all these years so I'll have to rework that and see if it improves with the change. It's still green, but doesn't look all that perky.

Amazingly enough there are three healthy, lush mums and some lovely purple flowers still thriving in my deck box. I have a super-happy miscellaneous houseplant at my kitchen window and my 2 office plants have persevered through horrible abuse. But the healthiest plant around my house is the manic weed that routinely sprouts in the basement window well.

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