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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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James Plant and his will to live
Monday 27 March @ 12:45:09 |
 by Steve McPherson
I can tell just by looking at you that you’re mistaken: you think killing plants is easy. You think it’s just about neglect. Oh my friend, you couldn’t be more wrong.
I learned from the best: my parents. Growing up, we had a small garden next to our back door, and I remember fondly every spring (well, for at least the first two springs) when we would go down to the little garden shop and buy a whole bunch of flowers to plant. By the Summer Solstice, the little garden would be completely overgrown with weeds. Our one success story was a rosebush that grew by the sidewalk to the garage. When my parents bought the house, everyone had commented on how temperamental and hard to take care of rosebushes were. Ours, however, thrived despite wanton neglect. Our secret? Runoff water from the sump pump in the basement dumped out onto it, apparently in just the right amount and at the right intervals.
 The
bonsai tree I had in my first apartment didn’t fare as well. I bought
it with such high hopes. Bonsai trees! It was all so Zen and Japanese. And a
good thing, too, because my carefully cultivated non-attachment to the things
of this world made it all the easier to dump it in the trash when I realized
that fruit flies were nesting in it.
 More recently, my girlfriend gave me a spider plant named James, and I decided
that this time it was going to be different. He came in an old yogurt container
and with a promise that you just can’t kill a spider plant. They’re
so easy to take care of! And he was. Mostly I left him out on the back deck
of my last apartment, where I couldn’t reap the benefits of his oxygen
production. He
seemed to like the sun, though, and I watered him every day. He grew and grew,
sprouting little spider babies, until eventually we had to move him to a big
new pot. And still he thrived, much to the wonderment of myself and- of course-
my parents. They couldn’t believe it.
Then I moved. James mostly hung out on the back porch now, still growing like
crazy. I even had to trim him. Or rather, my girlfriend had to, since by this
point I’d embarked on a strategic pattern of neglect intended to put an
end to my plant-growing success. Then winter came and we had to move him to
the inside front porch. That was October.
At this point, conservatively, I haven’t watered him for five months,
but James perseveres. It’s been a mystery; despite my best efforts to
ignore him as I walk by five or six times a day, he still lives.
Then I found out that my roommate’s been watering him. James and his shady
co-conspirators are presenting me with my biggest challenge yet, but I haven’t
given up yet. No plant’s going to push me around. ||
 
 
 
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