Most of you have received houseplants at some time in your life. I know Kathy and I have received many over the years. Frankly, we would have appreciated a bunch of cut flowers or a fake plant more than a living potted plant. It was always a challenge for us to keep the plant alive. No issues with cut flowers…you get to throw them away in about a week and with fake plants, they will always stay green. Eventually, those will find their way into the trash. Maybe it would break or fall from its perch or just accidentally be thrown away. Possibly a change in décor. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Let us go back to the live potted plant. These usually come with a card that talks about how to care for it. Suddenly you now have the responsibility to keep this thing alive. It becomes important to schedule the care on your calendar so that you don’t forget to water it and feed it. Yes, I said feed it. It isn’t enough to just water the thing…you need to provide nutrients for its well-being. This is like the egg you got in school where you had to take care of it and not drop it or break it. OMG, I was a kid enjoying life until I had this stupid egg to take care of. In a similar way, we must now care for the potted plant. Succulents are my favorites because they require little care, unfortunately for the most part they are ugly…at least to me. They also pointed out things that you can get hurt by touching in the wrong way. It can happen by just moving the cactus(succulent) somewhere else. The good news is that you really cannot tell if the cactus is still alive or not. It will look the same dead as alive and that is a good thing. No more nutrients and no more watering. Awesome!!!
How about a plant that is given to you by one of your children? We had a Bonzai that our daughter gave us. We actually bought a care kit to clip this thing. Bonzai’s live for hundreds of years…or can. Not in our case. Even with what we thought was good care the little Bonzai started to wilt. Now what? This was a present from our daughter. What if she comes and the thing is dead? It started to look pretty grim so we went online and tried to find a Bonzai that looked like the one we had. Even had the same pot. Since ours had seen better days we ordered a replacement and put the original in the Green Bin. Problem solved. If Marti came to our house she could see how good the Bonzai looked. At some point we are probably going to have to share the demise of the original Bonzai. Maybe we over-watered it, maybe it was just a sick plant, maybe we over-pruned it, whatever the reason it went to Bonzai heaven and the new replacement was actually generating flowers. Could this newer healthier version live for hundreds of years? Would they take pictures of it and estimate its value? Probably not because it also went to Bonzai heaven which is why we had to go over what happened to Bonzai #1 and Bonzai #2. It was easier to handle the death of Bonzai #2 because we had bought that one. Oh well…Marti hasn’t bought us another Bonzai or any other live plant for that matter. She will limit her gift choices to cut flowers or plastic or succulents. Just as a side note Marti has a way with plants. None of them die on her watch. The plant magic did not rub off on us. We were never able to keep potted plants alive. What does that say about us? I don’t know. We never had any problems keeping our four children alive. We never had any issues with their care. I think that is more important anyway. Best of luck with your care of plants and children.
