It is definitely going to take me a minute to get back into the swing of regular old, casual blogging. Almost everything I’ve written since moving to Chicago has been creative. And I’m very precious about my creative writing. The second I hit publish it’s re-read, edit, re-read, edit, re-read, edit—sometimes for several days before I leave it alone.
(Case in point, that Creation Story I wrote? That thing is almost unrecognizable from its first iteration. I really wish I’d sat on it longer before I sent it out. Do me a favor and re-read it, because it’s so much cleaner and clearer now. That would make me so happy. Thank you.)
It’s been years since I just grabbed the pen and blabbed, so to speak. That’s why I threw down that last post of topics to hit—so that without thinking about it too much, I could just pick something and get on it.
So let’s do that. Let’s talk about why I quit plants.
The plants didn’t do anything. It wasn’t their fault. They were lovely roommates, those plants. Quiet. Tidy. Contributed to the housework—well, the cleaning of the air, anyway. It was the grow lights that did me in. I just couldn’t deal with them anymore.
I tried everything. I tried pinkish bulbs. I tried cool bulbs. I tried warm bulbs. I set the timers so that they’d only be on when I was at work, which worked great for weekdays. But then the weekend rolled around, and there was no avoiding them. I even had the cutest little white linen custom curtains made, so I could draw them closed on the weekends. It was still awful. So overstimulating.
The humidity requirements were exhausting, too. And yes, I could have scaled back, ditched the Alocasias, and limited myself to easier plants. Didn’t want to. It was kind of all or nothing for me. I wanted my exotic babies or (almost) nothing it all.
I kept one Hoya and my Peperomia Hope, both of which are trained on ring trellises and just so lovely. Everything else I gave away to a very excited recipient.
I have no regrets. I cannot believe that not only did I learn to keep plants alive, I learned to keep some of the trickiest, most finicky diva plants around alive—and thriving! I’m very proud of myself. I’m very proud that I stepped so far out of my comfort zone, and to such success. Maybe some day I’ll pick it up again.
But right now, it’s nice to have that extra bandwidth back.