Category: plants

I swear to you, it is not their fault in any way.

I love my plants. My favorite indoor plant is a spider plant, but it is also the favorite plant of every single cat I have ever had. I decided this past summer to grab a tiny one while it was on sale and stick it in the window above the kitchen sink, thinking only one cat climbs counters and she couldn’t care less about touching plants.

Yeah, she left the spider and everything else alone, but someone else decided the counters were fair game after all the humans went to bed. After picking my spider plant out of the sink for the third time, I bought some plastic shelves that stick on windows via suction cups and now my spider is up and out of the way, safe from harm.

This house does not get a lot of light anywhere near where I have my plants. There’s a low wall between the living room and the kitchen/dining room and most everything lives there, including an avocado tree we are growing inside. I do have grow bulbs on the lamp closest to the plants, otherwise they’d never grow. Plus, not that I have red mangrove babies growing in the fish tank directly in front of those house plants, I have new lights hitting all of the above, mangroves and house plants, as well as avocado tree.

I always worry about over-watering or under-watering my plants. Recently, we have yet again been inundated with gnats. My husband read up on things and decided to us some mosquito hoops soaked in a bottle of water to water the plants once a week for several weeks in order to stop the gnat reproductive cycle of any gnats hanging out in my plants.
After the first week, one plant died outright. Another plant is hanging on by a couple stems. Every plant looked forlorn and unloved after that first week. Did he over-water them? Was the bacteria in the mosquito disks too much for my plants? I have no idea.

I bought a plant spray, specific for indoor and outdoor plants, safe around pets, plants, and kids, and have been using that since week two. Everyone but two plants are now looking happier and healthier. One was a rescue that had never really bounced back after saving; the other is the one that got sick from the initial dose of mosquito ring water. The first one that died was a seedling my son has been trying to grow. That one moved on, but today I noticed another seed in the same planter has sprouted and is trying to survive. Fingers crossed.

So, back to, how did my plants stress me out during July?

I was so worried that more than the two plants would die and I would be back to square one with my houseplants.

I worried about would they need watering while I was too sick, too exhausted, too overwhelmed to do anything about it.

I worried that if I fought through pain and fugue state and everything else to water them I would either drown them or not give them enough.

Ya know, my usual, but when I am already in a state where I am barely coping, everything is magnified.

I love my plants. I wish I could keep more, but with the cats, that’s not possible yet. I live in hope of one day being able to do so. I will dote on the ones I have now until then. And plant like mad outside as well.