Green Thumb-less

My mother always has beautiful gardens. Growing up, my family was treated to a profusion of obscenely healthy house plants clustered en masse in front of our windows. Outside, there was a bountiful vegetable garden, endless raspberry bushes laden with ripe fruit and…flowers. Those gorgeous splashes of color whose fragrant blossoms decorated our landscape from spring ‘till late into fall.


My mother has the greenest thumb of anybody I know. Seriously, all she has to do is look at a plant, and it immediately grows several inches and begins blooming. And although my mother has shared many of her fine qualities with me; a talent for art, a love of books, even a few freckles, alas, her green thumb is not among them.

I love flowers. Unfortunately, they don’t love me.

When my hubby and I bought our first home, unaware of this serious deficit in my biological makeup, I excitedly purchased an array of blossoms to line the front of our new little home. I happily troweled the dirt, planting my colorful impatiens beside feathery wands of astilbe. After hours of labor, I stood back and brushing soil from my hands, admired the effect I had created. Stunning.


It took only two weeks for me to kill them all.  (Click here to read the rest of my essay on Sasee magazine's website!)


Image by: Coy!