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What My Garden Has Taught Me
I am blooming along with my many plants.
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When I was young, my mother sent me a philodendron with a note scrawled in pencil: “Put your hands in the dirt and your face in the sun.” I don’t know why she offered this advice (borrowed from the English poet, Alfred Austin), but I do remember the quiet comfort it brought.
Such a simple message! I reread the note so often the paper wore thin. The philodendron was happy on the window sill, but I sensed it wanted company so I added a spider plant, a prayer plant and, a couple of vines. Soon, I had more plants than furniture.
Retail therapy for me is the gardening store. When I’m feeling low, I wander alone around the greenhouse, communing with nature. I love the dazzling varieties of African violets (Saintpaulia), which require plenty of light but can also burn under a hot sun, as I do. I like the orchids, even though I’ve never managed to keep one alive for more than a month.
My favorite orchid is called Just Add Ice, in Watercolor Blue, which is the color of the Caribbean sea. I love to feel the leaves of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Lamb’s Ears (Stachys Byzantina). Its velvety tongue-shaped foliage shimmers in a silver-gray that matches my own hair. In the greenhouse, I am among friends.
I live in an apartment now, and my plants are in individual containers placed in front of every window and along every sill. And, this may sound crazy, but I swear that they lean toward me in the mornings, and sing Vic Damone’s: “Good Morning, Morning Glory.”
One early morning, I bent to greet my dormant hibiscus, and I noticed a troubling bit of activity: tiny brown ants raced up and down the main stalks. Ants mean aphids.
I grabbed my magnifying glass and upturned some of the delicate young leaves. There they were: tiny white specks. Zillions of them. I got out my rubber gloves and a pan of soapy water and got to work, washing off each leaf with care, cooing encouraging words as if pampering a baby. Then, I mixed beads of insecticide into the soil, stirring with my wooden spoon.
When I was done, I sat alongside the pot, and tried to calm myself with a bowl of vanilla bean ice cream, which is what my plants believe I should eat. All will be well, I thought. All was not well. The next day, the dark wood floor was speckled with white dots. And, the dots were moving! Insects! Squirming, writhing insects. They’d orchestrated a mass exodus. They had catapulted themselves from the leaves and over the deep edge of the pot in a colossal effort to escape. I have to admit: I was a bit impressed with their determination. However, I don’t like bugs. Especially live ones.
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Aphids are small sap-sucking insects that mature rapidly, producing females that breed profusely. I can attest to the part about breeding profusely. They were everywhere: on the window, on the woodwork, in between the wood slats of the floor. For a moment, I considered moving to a different apartment. The hibiscus leaves were curled in agony; the tightly rolled supple buds glistened with the sticky, sugar-rich honeydew that is irresistible to ants.
Again, I thought, all is lost. This plant will never bloom again. I wanted to throw the whole thing away, but the pot wouldn’t fit down the garbage chute. I admit, I am prone to over-reacting. I seem to favor massive, disproportionate responses that skyrocket to the far reaches of catastrophe. And so, that is what I did. I panicked. I left a frantic message on the hotline of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I called a local exterminator who only laughed at my hysteria. The nursery manager at my favorite gardening center suggested I bring a sample branch into the shop for her inspection, but there was no way I was going to drive around with live insects in my car. By the time I hung up the phone, my hands were shaking.
Schlumbergera plant, also known as a Christmas cactus.
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I had to calm myself. I went into the kitchen and sat at the table near my wise old Schlumbergera, my Christmas cactus. This plant has been with me forever: since before I moved, before I lost my sister, my mother, my father. I caressed one of the scalloped leaf segments to quell my nervous hands.
The cactus has dense and robust stems that cascade over the sides of the pot like Spanish moss, and bristly threads that protrude gaily from the areoles at the tips.
During its off-season, I cover the whole plant with a heavy canvas tote and place the pot in the back closet to simulate the onset of fall, its favored growing season. This measure, while exhausting, produces an array of stunning flowers, tubular and symmetrical, that dangle downward like tiny, colorful bells. The only thing it needs from me is sunshine, water, and a little bit of patience.
I remembered my mother’s note — its simplicity, and hope — and returned to my hibiscus. I knew what to do: I washed the leaves, and washed them again. I moved the plant to a sunnier spot and loosened the soil with my fingers, massaging earth near the root. The words reverberated through my system: Put your face in the sun and your hands in the dirt. Every day, I tended the hibiscus. And one day, much later, I was greeted with a gigantic white bloom.
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