How Does Your Garden Grow?

I have a lot of association with the word "brown". Obviously of course, it's my last name. Did I ever tell you about the time a phone salesman asked me how I spelled my last name? It took me almost 5 minutes to make him understand it. Really. I don't know what was wrong with the dude. I guess his parents had an aversion to crayons or something when he was growing up.

Anyway....

I also have brown circles around my knuckles. I don't know why. I've scrubbed my hand until it's bled and can't get rid of them (no doubt because it's actually in my skin pigment rather than, you know...dirt or something.) I know...I find it pretty weird myself.

Then I also am blessed with (as Heather affectionately refers to them) the "Brown bags". You need only take one look at my eyes to know if I'm sick or tired or just generally not feeling the groove of life, because they get all puffy and droopy and it's just pitiful. Pitiful, I say...

Unfortunately, I also have a brown thumb. I hate this. For one, it goes against the laws of genetics. My dad could grow anything. His front-of-the-house-alternating-red-and-white impatiens display was so desirable that soon after we moved into our house several copycat red-and-white-impatiens-displays began showing up throughout the neighborhood. Mom also follows suit....there's nice houseplants sitting around, and she raised her own garden last year, and...well, it just disgusting. Not too mention Aunts and Uncles and Grannys who can just look at a plant and it starts to grow. (Well, maybe they're not that powerful, but still...)

I - on the other hand - can kill a plastic plant. Seriously, I have actually done that. By the way, a word of advice...Don't ever sit a plastic plant too close to a significant heating source. I'm just sayin'....

So anyway, I've got this house of my own now so I should have houseplants to make it look all "homey" inside, right? Well, this could be a problem. I have one plant that my aunt gave me a few months back. I don't know what it is because I am also flower-illiterate. I can point out Roses and Dandelions pretty well, but it gets a bit dicey after that. (And don't start with the whole "a dandelion is actually a weed" thing!)

But I'm trying to take care of my little plant as best I can. However, I don't think it's a good thing when the leaves start to turn brown and droop to the ground on it. I also don't think it's a good thing when they curl up into a thin little tube. (I really had no idea that plant leaves would do that.) Mom was over the other day, looked at it and wanted to know what was wrong with it. I think it's kind of obvious that if I knew the answer to that there probably would not be a need to even ask the question....However, I let it go and said "I have no idea, but I think I'm killing it." Then she touched it and said "You're giving it too much water! Can't you tell that by touching the dirt?!" Which also seems to be a question that also would not need to be asked if the answer were truly "yes"...

So, now I've learned I should touch my plant's dirt more often. (Of course, I still don't know when "wet" is "too wet", but....) And I'd already discovered that it is not good when the leaves start rolling up into little tubes. See, I'm getting there....Little by little I'll surely get the hang of this, right?

I just wonder how many flowers I'll lose to that great Garden in the Sky along the way....