Tending tiny green things
On plant parenthood and self-care routines
A few months ago, I decided to become a plant parent.
We had just moved into a new place and it had more window sills than wall space. My go-to decorating style since we’ve lived in apartments the last few years has been to fill wide swaths of bland off-white walls with family photos and art prints from vacations — we’re talking gallery walls containing 60 or more frames. They’ve become a bit of a joke with the photographer we have had in our home to document our children growing up: How many times will she take a photo of us in front of a photo of us she also took in another time or space?
But this apartment is different.
One entire wall at the front is nearly floor to ceiling windows looking out over our small patio in an attempt to let in the maximum amount of light possible. Because of the building layout, there’s actually no other apartment on any side of us except above; this means we have windows on three sides of our space for the first time in five years. Also, because it is a basement-level apartment, the ceilings are a foot shorter than what we have become accustomed to.
This is a lot of words to say I don’t have much bare wall space. I do have five reasonably deep window sills though. So, enter: plants.
This is a surprising pivot for me. In 2011, I killed three cacti in one year (my attention was too much; I overwatered them until they rotted from the inside out, collapsing on themselves into some sort of sticky green goo). Since then, I have sworn off plants. I mean, who kills that many cacti?! It was clear that I shouldn’t be trusted to keep helpless tiny green things alive.
But, that was then and this was now, I reasoned. I have four living things -- two tiny humans, a cat and a dog -- relying on me to feed them, water them and attend to their myriad needs. There’s no way I can kill anything not loudly whining at me for a snack with too much attention anymore. Surely this time my plants would be safe from overzealous watering.
I mentioned to a few friends I might try to keep some plants alive, and via gifts and my own purchases, I somehow became the owner of eight plants. It seemed like a nice number to start. I did a bit of research on all of them, decided my best route forward was to occasionally stick my finger in their soil and only act if it felt very dry, and went about my life of attending to demands from other, louder living things in my apartment.
Within a few weeks, it became clear that mostly ignoring plants wasn’t the right route either. Some type of tiny little gnat seemed to be hovering over most of them. I worried they weren’t getting enough light in the window I had chosen, so I moved them to another one, but still, ends of leaves were turning brown or yellow. Some websites told me meant I was under watering them, but then other websites told me it could happen from overwatering them. Puzzled at the possibility that I was somehow slowly killing them by doing both, I chose to keep mostly ignoring them since a ready solution was unclear. Some leaves developed scar-like marks or had small notches appear. I half-heartedly Googled these issues as well, concluded that this was all taking more time than I cared to spend, and again returned to barely remembering to check on them once or twice per week.
“Mama’s plants are struggling,” William began to regularly say. (There is nothing like a nearly 4-year-old shouting your secret shame to anyone who will listen. Your mom on FaceTime. A grocery store clerk. A passerby on a walk. The other mom at a playdate. You as check how moist the soil is.) And it was true, they were. I began to resign myself to the idea that all of these plants would eventually die, that I had now managed to swing the opposite direction from the Cacti Culling of 2011. I can kill plants both by too much and too little attention! My skills as a champion Black Thumb are great indeed.
William could have easily said the same sentence about me, though: Mama is struggling.
Since I became a mother, my self care “routine” has mimicked my treatment of my plants. Ignore my self as an entity until it becomes clear my soil is parched as can be, and then douse myself with water in attempt to overcorrect.
The water has taken varied forms. I love to brainstorm new routines that I become convinced will be the secret to feeling less exhausted at the end of the day. I was obsessed with the idea of my children’s afternoon snack being a “tea time” complete with a poetry book and a podcast for awhile; I have two unopened bags of epson salt in my bathroom cabinet because last summer I took a total of four baths with a book and a glass of wine after bedtime and assumed it would become a habit. Other times, I have been convinced the answer is time with friends, so I have filled my calendar with nights out, brunches, an articles club and other commitments. When both of my babies turned one (and I realized how much of my identity had been subsumed by them), I embarked on quests to strengthen already existing or otherwise add new hobbies — I was going to do Morning Pages and write at least 750 words a day! I’ll learn to play the piano, a lifelong goal!
The cycle of inattention veering wildly and suddenly into too much attention is the same, too. I’ve dabbled in various forms of therapy, the hour-long sessions always feeling too short for everything I need to parse and understand about myself, words spilling out the same too quick way water spills from the watering can and floods my plants. At least once a week, I Google tips to stop yelling at my children, but much like the minimal amount of research I have done on plant care, it gets disregarded in the moment because implementing a new strategy that centers mostly on taking care of myself feels too hard to figure out despite the crushing weight of knowing how hurtful my yelling is.
I am now nearly four years into motherhood and this lack of consistent tending. My leaves are turning brown in some spots and yellow in others, and I definitely have caused strange scars and notches to appear.
Of the many takeaways from this year of upheaval and isolation, one thing has become clear to me: I yearn for vast amounts of down time. My hobbies (writing, reading, learning the piano) mostly require quiet spaces and focused concentration, which makes sense because my average day often feels like a sprint of hopping from one need and task to the other, frequently having to remember to return to the laundry or the dinner on the stove after soothing yet another round of tears or answering the 3,764th question of the day. Now, every weekend, Chris takes the kids on a hike, neighborhood walks or a “car adventure” so I can just think, read, write, practice. Whether they are gone 15 minutes or five hours, it never feels like quite enough water to quench my thirst.
I worry about this need as we begin to move into the after. Despite not yet being vaccinated, things are starting to change in our routines. Our calendar is once again beginning to fill up. William starts in-person school this week (outside on a playground, masks required...but it’s at least something close to what I had hoped he’d get from preschool). We’ve agreed to more outdoor playdates where we’ve navigated various levels of mask-wearing from other children and adults on playgrounds. I had dinner and a cocktail at a restaurant with two vaccinated friends. I decided to go to Target just to wander around twice within the last month, a decision that feels mysteriously inexplicable after a year of restricting my errands to only when they became too necessary to no longer ignore and to opt for curbside pickup when available. I can feel the restrictions — both government- and self-imposed — loosening.
But if I begin to fill my time with things I used to enjoy — or even just tasks that are mundane and normal — will I forget the lessons I have learned about how much time I need to just be? How will I learn to say no to the commitments and plans I have shed during this time and don’t miss?
A few weeks ago, after a park playdate, William and I bought some potting soil, and some plant food. Despite suggestions that I try repotting my plants, I had put off this errand for awhile — it felt unimportant in light of my conviction these plants would die anyway. But for some reason, I decided, it was time. Together, we scooped special moisture control soil into new pots in the hope that would protect our plant babies from my watering whims. I marked dates on the calendar when I would need to give them plant food. I re-committed to checking on them with a bit more consistency.
So far, they’re still a little scraggly, but they’re not dead yet. (Well, with the exception of one, and I’m not to blame for that. It was a gift from a faraway friend, and it arrived in its shipping box quite a bit worse for the wear. I kind-of, sort-of tried to keep it going, but as its few remaining leaves have shriveled since this repotting attempt, it’s become clear it is a lost cause.)
Maybe, as I learn to better tend to my plants, I can l learn to better tend to the tiny green shoots and leaves that make up me, too.
