Operation - Save the Plant

My husband is a better gardener than me...Yes, you read that right.

And yes, it's hard to admit.

It hurts even more when you have to tell people that all the plants in your house are actually being taken care of by your husband because every single plant you owned somehow managed to die.

Every. Single. One.

This year, however, I decided it was time to change that. I finally have a place where I can create my own little garden, and I saw it as the perfect opportunity to prove not only to my husband but also to myself that my plants can actually survive.

Honestly, this feels harder than running a household. I can cook, clean, and handle a hundred other things, but keeping a plant alive seems to be a completely different challenge.

To avoid another gardening disaster, I decided to start with just one plant. Actually, the only plant I had in my apartment. It was a gift from a friend, and one day when she came to visit, she almost had a heart attack after seeing its condition. While she was staring at the poor thing in horror, I was standing there thinking, "Well, it's still green, so it can't be that bad."

Apparently, it was that bad. 🤔

She looked ready to rescue the plant and take it home herself. Instead, she gave me a mission. By the next time she visited, the plant needed to be in a bigger pot, with fresh soil, properly cared for, and looking healthy.

Easy enough to say. Whether I could actually do it was another question entirely.

It's probably one of the easiest gardening tasks in the world, but somehow I still had no idea what I was doing. Of course, there was absolutely no way I was asking my husband for help. The whole point of this project was proving that I could keep a plant alive on my own. 😌😌

Before I could begin, I had another problem. My friend had told me the name of the plant at least a hundred times, but naturally I had forgotten it completely. Luckily, we live in a world full of technology. I took a photo of the plant with my phone, clicked on it, and within seconds my smartphone identified it. 👌

Honestly, modern technology deserves a medal sometimes.

It turned out that my mystery plant was a Heart-leaf Philodendron, which is apparently one of the easiest houseplants to keep alive. Suddenly everything made sense. My friend knew exactly what kind of plant she needed to buy for someone with my gardening history. 😌

Feeling slightly more confident, I started the rescue mission. First, I cleaned the leaves because they were covered in dust. Google never told me to do that, but it felt right. After cleaning the plant, I went shopping and bought a bigger pot, coconut soil, houseplant soil, and even fertilizer because if I was going to become a gardener, I wanted to look professional.

Everything was going smoothly until I opened the coconut soil package.

Instead of soil, I found a brick. 😩

Seriously, why does soil come in brick form?

Back to Google.

Apparently, you just place the brick in a bucket, add water, and wait for it to magically expand into soil. I felt incredibly stupid reading the instructions, but even more stupid when it actually worked. 😂

Once the soil situation was sorted, the rest was surprisingly easy. I added some coconut soil, mixed in the houseplant soil, placed the plant into its new home, and finished everything off with fertilizer.

Looking back, it wasn't complicated at all, but when I finished, I felt like I had just completed a marathon. 💪

My plant was alive. For now…🤔

Mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, saving one plant gave me a dangerous amount of confidence.

After successfully repotting my indoor plant, I somehow convinced myself that I was now a gardening expert. Naturally, the next logical step was to start planting flowers outside.

My flower selection process was highly scientific.

I walked around the garden center and picked flowers that made me think, "Oh, that's pretty." ☺️

That was it.

No research.

No planning.

No checking what conditions they needed. 🤔

As it turns out, flowers are far more dramatic than I expected. Some need full sun, some prefer shade, some love water, some hate water, and some seem to have a list of requirements longer than a luxury hotel booking.

The first flower I actually knew was lavender. My mom recommended it because it attracts bees and butterflies while helping keep mosquitoes away. Sounded perfect to me, so I bought two. Later I learned that lavender needs lots of sunlight, and for once I had accidentally planted something in exactly the right place.

Feeling proud of myself, I moved on to a fuchsia. The label said it liked morning sun and afternoon shade, so I carefully planted it. Later I discovered that fuchsias are often happiest in hanging baskets and pots.

I decided not to panic.

Surely it would survive anyway.

Well, it survived exactly one day.

The following afternoon my husband was mowing the lawn and accidentally cut it because he didn't see where I had planted it. To be fair, I had only marked the spot with two small stones, but still... how do you miss that?

Right now there is one tiny leaf left, and I'm choosing to believe in miracles.

Then came a Red Boronia. It looked beautiful in the shop, but only after planting it did I discover that it doesn't particularly enjoy winter and is usually better off in a pot indoors.

Once again, I found myself wondering why I always do things first and research them afterward.

The same thing happened with my begonia. I planted it, admired how pretty it looked, and only then learned that it often grows best in pots with excellent drainage.

At that point I simply stopped reading and decided to let fate take control.

I also bought three identical flowers because they looked cute. Even now, I'm not entirely sure what they are. Whatever they are, they looked dead within two days.

Still, I haven't given up hope.

Maybe they're just being dramatic.

To make things even more interesting, I also bought several packets of flower seeds without paying much attention to what flowers they would become. I scattered them around the garden, covered them with soil, and hoped for the best.

Sometimes gardening feels less like a skill and more like gambling.

For now, I think my flower adventure is finished. At some point I'll definitely add some sunflowers because they've always been my favorite flowers, and hopefully those will be easier to understand than everything else I've planted so far.

And trust me, this isn't the end of my gardening disasters. I still have another outdoor project to tell you about, and I'm fairly certain that one turned out even worse.

But that's a story for another day.

After all, everything I do, I do for myself... even if my husband is still winning the gardening competition. 😏

With love, @tinabrezpike ❤️