This is getting out of hand...
I currently have 13 plants living in my apartment.
My confusion and frustration with this fact comes from my damn attachment to animism and general pagan-ness that does not allow me to throw a plant away when all it needs is a little care. This is also what makes me pick up beach glass and take it home. Oh man - somehow I can rationalize this with my love of eating beef. I am just a walking hypocrite.
In any case, my current frustration is brought on by the fact that I picked up another two plants this weekend (a charming violet having white flowers with frilly purple edges, and a Calandiva which is a succulent plant with a load of little orange-yellow-peachy-pink flowers on it). I think of these flowers like um… charming Victorian-era ladies dressed up to go to a ball – elegant, voluptuous, and delightfully delicate.
This has brought me to my current total, and it is getting a little out of hand. This started when I lived in the international house (also known lovingly as: "evil pit of festering death", "home of elevators that terrify non-residents", "disturbingly infested with ants", and "not all that international, and not really a house"). This was my first year where friends were having the same freak-out moments that I see the 1st years having now and thus I spent most of my evenings alone. So I collected plants to keep me company. Oh man does this sound sad now.
Anyway, I had a philodendron that was growing strangely, so I cut it off and suddenly was inspired to try rooting the cut ends (BAD IDEA) so now I have 6 of those damn plants that (again) I can't or won't kill.
Then the ivy. I bought it at the co-op my first week of grad school and it was really really tiny - and now it's, like, huge. I have to twist the vines together so that they don't hang on the floor. I'm thinking that it is surviving the U of C much better than I am - perhaps because it isn't sentient and doesn't need to produce papers about the role of taste in Hawthorne (just a guess). This one is like a professor, perhaps – scraggly beard, constant need for beverages, pushy, and with an ego growing ever larger.
The jade plant is a mess, It won't stay in the pot and simply refuses to grow in a decent vertical way, opting instead for a sprawling, crawling trek across my windowsill to perhaps make friends with my...
Other violet. This one has pink flowers and will not stop growing no matter how much I neglect it. I've had to repot the damn thing twice and it still expands and flowers in a most charming yet annoying way.
Two more: the dusty miller (whose lacy friend didn't make it on the trip here from Racine), and the Hens and Chicks, which also had to be repotted last week.
Now I love growing things in that abstract greenery sort of way, but when I look around my apartment all I see is green green green. Actually, most of the plants I don’t mind – it’s the philodendrons. They’re pure evil, they put holes in your wall, they grow all stringy and scraggly, they need constant attention, they never look nice – actually, they’re like a really needy beer-swilling mechanic boyfriend.
Perhaps I can give them away - does anyone want a philodendron?
My confusion and frustration with this fact comes from my damn attachment to animism and general pagan-ness that does not allow me to throw a plant away when all it needs is a little care. This is also what makes me pick up beach glass and take it home. Oh man - somehow I can rationalize this with my love of eating beef. I am just a walking hypocrite.
In any case, my current frustration is brought on by the fact that I picked up another two plants this weekend (a charming violet having white flowers with frilly purple edges, and a Calandiva which is a succulent plant with a load of little orange-yellow-peachy-pink flowers on it). I think of these flowers like um… charming Victorian-era ladies dressed up to go to a ball – elegant, voluptuous, and delightfully delicate.
This has brought me to my current total, and it is getting a little out of hand. This started when I lived in the international house (also known lovingly as: "evil pit of festering death", "home of elevators that terrify non-residents", "disturbingly infested with ants", and "not all that international, and not really a house"). This was my first year where friends were having the same freak-out moments that I see the 1st years having now and thus I spent most of my evenings alone. So I collected plants to keep me company. Oh man does this sound sad now.
Anyway, I had a philodendron that was growing strangely, so I cut it off and suddenly was inspired to try rooting the cut ends (BAD IDEA) so now I have 6 of those damn plants that (again) I can't or won't kill.
Then the ivy. I bought it at the co-op my first week of grad school and it was really really tiny - and now it's, like, huge. I have to twist the vines together so that they don't hang on the floor. I'm thinking that it is surviving the U of C much better than I am - perhaps because it isn't sentient and doesn't need to produce papers about the role of taste in Hawthorne (just a guess). This one is like a professor, perhaps – scraggly beard, constant need for beverages, pushy, and with an ego growing ever larger.
The jade plant is a mess, It won't stay in the pot and simply refuses to grow in a decent vertical way, opting instead for a sprawling, crawling trek across my windowsill to perhaps make friends with my...
Other violet. This one has pink flowers and will not stop growing no matter how much I neglect it. I've had to repot the damn thing twice and it still expands and flowers in a most charming yet annoying way.
Two more: the dusty miller (whose lacy friend didn't make it on the trip here from Racine), and the Hens and Chicks, which also had to be repotted last week.
Now I love growing things in that abstract greenery sort of way, but when I look around my apartment all I see is green green green. Actually, most of the plants I don’t mind – it’s the philodendrons. They’re pure evil, they put holes in your wall, they grow all stringy and scraggly, they need constant attention, they never look nice – actually, they’re like a really needy beer-swilling mechanic boyfriend.
Perhaps I can give them away - does anyone want a philodendron?
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