New Growth on a Plant

I don't have a great track record with plants.

My sorority's flower is the violet, and I received so many potted African violets during my four years of college. Not one of them survived beyond a few months. By the end of the semester, their leaves would be black and crunchy and disintegrate when touched.

When I moved into my current home, a friend gave me a spider plant as a housewarming gift. I think I have had to bring it back to life no less than six times after I let it turn completely brown. (These are surprisingly unkillable plants!)

It turns out that a basic fact of plant life had been eluding me all that time: plants need water.

It was a Christmas cactus gifted to me by a student and an offhand comment from my mom that changed me. 

When I received this Christmas cactus with its beautiful hot pink blooms, I was instantly nervous given my history with gifted plants. But, for the first time, I felt compelled to keep this plant alive. I was a forty-year-old woman who was actively keeping two children alive, surely I could handle this plant!

Then my mom mentioned that she watered all of her plants on the same day each week. It just clicked. Yes...you just give plants water...on a regular basis...and they will live! I picked Sunday as my watering day and that Christmas cactus is still going strong. I've actually had to repot it twice because it was growing.

I now have over fifteen (gasp!) living plants in my house. And one of my greatest delights is noticing new growth when I am watering. It never ceases to surprise me that a plant is alive and growing with me as its owner. 

 

The other day I was delighted to see that this orchid had a new little leaf coming in. 

When I was a freshman in college, I took some kind of test that suggested possible careers for you. One of the results was a gardener. I remember laughing about it as a random fluke (and going on to leave a dozen dead African violets in my wake). Now, I'm no Martha Stewart to be sure, but maybe there was the tiniest bit of truth in those results after all.