Letting the Outside In

Before I moved from a basement apartment in hell, to a deluxe condo in the sky, I lived in a house, replete with lawn, a flooding basement and more bugs than Insect Planet. Still, while I never did any yard work at the house (I hired people with green thumbs, red noses, and orange hair—clowns who thought it was funny to leave cow poop on my lawn, then track it into my garage). That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to let the outside in (often I would open the window and invite flies and pesky moths in to spend the night—until my wild and untamed resident spider would kill them and eat them). So, as you can tell, I enjoyed nature.

While I enjoyed it, I couldn’t do much with it in the apartment. I could hardly get my dingy graying furniture to fade (back to white) with the amount of sunlight streaming through my widows, so all I could raise inside were dust-covered plastic plants (an exotic, but hardy, variety of everlasting perennials). They were easy enough to care for. I’d fertilize them (since I’d learned to love the smell of fresh cow poop) and I’d sing them a lullaby when they were sagging from too much sunning and I’d blow the dust off their leaves and petals when I didn’t have time to bathe them in my shower. But they never gave anything back—no babies, no aphids, not yellowing leaves. Thus, when I moved into my condo home, I truly wanted something alive to care for. I didn’t want a dog. I wanted a few plants that I could clone whenever the mood struck me (hey if I couldn’t have babies, why shouldn’t they?).

I realized a fact about plants: You need to water them and to talk to them and water them some more or they will die. You water them, you talk to them, you water them some more and yet they die. It’s a commonly known fact: Too much talking was the death of the salesman.

Not to fear, I knew of a great nursery where I could get some “hardy” houseplants. They were hardy, because anything that could survive in a place where the only sun it got was from a flashing ho (who was too old to pick up tricks), has to be hardy. I mean, these garden centers rarely put their plant in direct sunlight (so how can they recommend that a plant needs “full light” to thrive?). Here, I purchased a couple of “hardy” plants and asked the horticulturist-wannabes how to care for them. “You need to water them and talk to them and water them some more, but not too much talking.” Okay, so I decided with these new houseplants (they are houseplants because they must use the litter box and cannot go out caterwauling around with the hydrangea shrubs and create bastard grass—it’s real—look it up!) that I would not say a word. But when they started leaning the opposite direction of the window, trying to hear the television, I knew they were seeking my attention, so I had to say something. Finally, I got into a rhythm: I made one witty comment and said, “Grow. Grow. Grow.” And they did for months and months.

Then I went out of town on a business trip and didn’t talk to them or water them for an entire two days. Now remember, these are “hardy” plants. When I returned, the plants were depressed and leaning toward the window as if they wanted to jump: a form of hardy-plant hari-kari or plant-suicide. They were bone dry—probably from all that crying about my departure. Plus, they didn’t seem to care about my witty comments anymore—maybe they found them too dry—I can’t be sure. They just stopped caring. Depression had set in.  Even though I watered them, tried talking to them, and watered them some more—they died.

Not to worry. I knew I didn’t have a green thumb (red nose or orange hair), so I brought along some of my favorite dust-coated plastic plants from my previous apartment. I figure, if I cannot let nature live in my condo, at least I can make it appear as if it does. Recently, I even got a pet housefly.