In the movie “Gone In 60 Seconds” starring Nicolas Cage, the gang of car thieves refers to every car they steal as a lady, and give them lady names. The biggest ticket car they plan to steal is a 1967 Mustang GT5 that goes by the name Eleanor.
I love that movie.
And this Moby track that’s one of the greatest hype songs ever:
Well if Nic Cage has cars, I have… house plants.
Lots of house plants. Probably too many house plants.
The common refrain in our house is when someone mentions how many plants we have I immediately respond with “yeah, I want it to feel like a jungle”.
Today I spent 6 good hours with my ladies (the house plants). I never plan these types of days, it sort of just happens on a weekend day when we have nothing else planned.
It usually starts with me watering them all. Then I notice some brown leaves or leggy shoots and start pruning them up. Before I know it I’ve got my table set up, potting soil out, rooting powder ready, and I’ve become engulfed in treating my ladies to a day of beauty.
What really makes my heart happy is propagating my ladies, which makes more ladies. Then nurturing those new baby ladies until they can be transplanted into a proper pot, take root, and spread their goodness upward and outward into our home.
Today I had a blast cleaning up my 4 different varieties of Dracaena’s, taking all the Aloe Vera pups and propagating them, giving my giant Monstera a nice clean-up, and then giving my multiple Schefflera’s new homes.
I did have to make some hard decisions today, too. Sometimes plants I’ve had for years I realize I just don’t want anymore, but I feel so invested in them. I’ve watered them hundreds of times, pruned them, re-potted them, fertilized them, moved them around to get more or less sun, propagated them and given them to friend and neighbors.
If I’m honest though, there comes a time when for whatever reason one of my ladies just doesn’t bring me joy anymore. Today it was a fern, so beautiful and wild, but I got sick of cleaning up all her brown dried leaves that fall everyday and need to be vacuumed up.
It’s one thing to make a decision on something benign like a T-Shirt or Shampoo, “does this still bring me joy or no?”. But a plant I’ve had around for years??? Kinda heartbreaking.
Today I present my overwhelming gratitude to my ladies. They bring so much to my life. They clean the air my family breathes, they bring color and beauty to our rooms, they show us what growth looks like, they are un-judging beings that let us care for them, they turn light into oxygen, and most of all they bring nature and life from across the globe into our home to delight us.
With love and deep appreciation,
-Andrew