Yesterday, as I watered all my houseplants, I was reminded of a time – long ago – when I was living back home. After I graduated from undergraduate school, I found myself at loose ends. I had a teaching degree in secondary education, but there were no jobs available. And even if there were, I was not sure I wanted to be a public school teacher. I’d majored in Drama and Speech, minored in English Language and Literature, and that particular concentration didn’t make for an employer’s dream hire.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I had no money. So I moved back home into the bedroom that I had gone home to on various breaks from college. It was nicely decorated, of course. Knowing me, the girl who wallpapered the inside of her Barbie case, did you doubt it? But I wanted to make it my own in a way that I hadn’t during my four years of college. Stereo? Check. Hundreds of record albums? Check. Lots of books? Of course.
I had never really had anything to do with my mom’s garden – which was minimal, at best. The joys of gardening were yet to be discovered. But I loved houseplants and there was a little shop not far from our home that was all about houseplants. Plants, pots, watering cans, misters, books about plants – it was all there. There were a lot of fairly exotic plants along with the standard favorites.
I started to hang out there when I wasn’t substitute teaching. I asked the owner all sorts of questions. I learned. I started buying houseplants, one by one, and my small bedroom became a greenhouse.
It’s a tricky thing, moving back home after college. I’d been off on my own for four years and suddenly I was back in my childhood bedroom in a tiny house with two younger sisters and my parents and though I loved my family, I was (and am) a person who likes solitude.
Making my bedroom a haven just for me was absolutely essential.
I had a many-tiered plant stand that was full-up with plants. I had hanging plants on either side of my two windows. I had pots on window sills, in groupings on the floor. I loved watering and misting them and repotting them when they outgrew their current ‘housing.’
I was nuts about my plants.
This same plant shop was just down the street from a well-known needlepoint shop, something I was also into at the time. Plants and needlepoint. Such strong memories.
After I eventually moved out and was on my own, I still had houseplants. I had them in Philadelphia when I moved away to go to graduate school. And in Cambridge, when I started teaching at Boston University. In fact, one of the things that was hardest for me when I moved to San Diego was giving up my plants. I couldn’t transport them to California (I don’t think you could bring any plants into the state and even if I could have, I didn’t want them inside a moving van for more than a week) and so I passed them on to a good friend. It was like giving up my children.
Since then I’ve always had a plant or two, sometimes many more – depending on how much light the apartment or house I was living in received. My first studio apartment in Philadelphia had just one window and it was in the back of the building, so there was very little light. It was the kind of place where I always had to have one or more lights on. No plants there. But in the two other apartments I lived in while I was in Philadelphia? Yes. Much more light. And my Cambridge apartment was full of windows, including a charming bay window, so I went a little crazy in the best possible way and had plants everywhere.
When I moved here and had my own gardens for the first time – not temporarily established at a rental cottage, but at our very own house – I had just one houseplant for the first couple of years. It’s the one you see above by the staircase. It was in our rental, as well. I was so busy adding plants to the garden beds and establishing even more beds, that I didn’t feel the need for more houseplants. I was nurturing outside. Then I got a pothos (the one in the first photo) and then I rooted a cutting of that plant and another pothos appeared in the bathroom.
Now, the gardens are established and I have houseplants everywhere, along with whatever outdoor plants I decide to overwinter. I’m back where I was when I was 21. Full circle.
That makes me very happy. Plants and pottery.
I’m off to Hartford this afternoon to spend the night in preparation for a full day of rehearsal tomorrow. I’ll try to post tomorrow morning, depending on how much time I have. If I don’t post, you’ll know why.
Happy Thursday.
Claudia, I love house plants. I’ve never been much of a gardener but have always enjoyed loads of green inside. Years with children saw fewer plants but my office always had a pathos at least. Charlie liked to munch on the leaves of plants so over the years I’ve had a few here and there. They bring me much joy as I see they do you. Enjoy your time in Hartford.
hugs,
Linda
I will, thanks, Linda!
You will hate me after I tell you this, but there was a time in my life when I was known as the “plant assassin”. I am not very proud of that stage of my life, but it’s true. I would either over water or forget to water my plants. When I moved to NYC and lived in a cute but tiny apartment, I filled it with plants and my neglectful ways changed. I wish I had started sooner like you did.
Big Texas Hugs,
Susan and Bentley
It’s easy to forget to water them. Now that I have more of them, I find I’m better at remembering to water them.
I do love houseplants. Do you remember the macrame’ hangars ~ with the beads ~ for hanging them?? I had several of those for my plants. A few of my plants have been with us for over 30 years through cuttings and starters. One has grown so much that it snakes through the ceiling of our enclosed front porch and is supported with hooks where I used to have hanging pots. I don’t know what I would do if I lost that one!!
Safe travels today and tomorrow!!
I do remember those hangers. I confess I had a few, simply because they were the only plant hangers available! I love the image of your plant moving across your ceiling!
Of course you are a plant lover…you are a nurturer…..I think they go hand in hand! I’ve had plants since the 70’s…my parents had plants….but my mom was the ultimate gardener! Oh the flowers and veggies she would grow! I didn’t get that gene…the flower and veggie gene…but I did get the houseplant gene! We received a philodendron as a wedding present. Kept her growing….her name was Trudy….for 40 years. I have quite the collection of houseplants…not only do they clean the air, but I love the freshness they bring to a room. Travel safe! ;)
I love that they clean the air, of course, and I just love seeing green everywhere! I don’t have the veggie gene, either, but my parents always had a vegetable garden and I’d kill for some of my mom’s rhubarb! (I think I’ll have to plant some this year!)
Yes…I miss my mom’s rhubarb too! Oh..and the rhubarb crisp she made…sweet memories! ;)
Same story for me. A renter all my life, I’ve had houseplants since college, and actually still have a pothos my Mom potted for me from one of hers 30 years ago]. Some years I’ve had container gardens on my covered porch – cherry tomatoes, mint, baby lettuces etc too. My classroom had a gorgeous big south-facing window where I kept a dozen geraniums in terra cotta pots and had help from my first graders watering and tending them. And when I moved to a university position I had office plants too, mostly dish gardens and smaller, low-maintenance plants that don’t require much space or light to be beautiful. But I was a tad jealous of our director who had room and sunshine enough for a big gorgeous spider plant in a macrame holder in her office window. It eventually had dozens of spider “babies” hanging down and was truly beautiful.
Oh, I love spider plants! I had a very large one both at home and in Cambridge, with lots of babies! I have a little one now, but I just might have to get a bigger one, Janet.
From where I sit in my “knitting chair” I can see seven house plants. I love them all and can tell you exactly where they came from. I’m not the best at caring for them, but I do try. I loved hearing your stories of growing in your love of all things green.
BLessings,
Betsy
I have had my periods of a wee bit of neglect! It’s easy, especially with hardy plants, to forget to water them!
I have always had houseplants as well – even as a teenager in my own room. I have fewer now, but my Jade that is 35 years old and it’s child from a cutting whose age I don’t remember are my favorites. I had a Christmas Cactus which bloomed at Thanksgiving and Easter my Aunt sent when my father died 28 years ago which died last year so I’ve had to replace it with another in the same color. I also used to have a giant perennial garden, but have sadly given it up due to chronic back issues. Some of my favorites were Lavender, Bee Balm, Ladies Mantel, Lambs Ears and many different Yarrow. I never had luck with Iris which I love, perhaps the deer like them too.
Enjoy Hartford – at least it’s warming up!
It’s definitely not easy on the back, Karen. Mine is almost self-sustaining at this point except for the initial clean-up in the spring. My mom had a Christmas cactus that she loved. Meredith has it now.
Claudia
Your story is so sweet. My son has had a love of plants since his high school horitculture days. He is in flux now with his Teaching plans. HE has been living with us and saving his teaching salary for the last 3 years…
now he wants to live in Mexico and teach english next year.. It is all so unsettling to me but I must be supportive. and let him bloom where he is planted
It would be exciting for him but hard for you, of course.
I remember my first college apartment. My roomies and I discovered a huge bedding of coleus at a bank downtown. We snuck down there one night and took cuttings. You know coleus are notoriously easy to propagate. We ended up with dozens of coleus that we divvied up when we went on to other housing options when the year ended.
Now, my house plants are confined to my kitchen window, only because when I had cats living with me, they would terrorize any plants elsewhere. For some reason, they ignored the kitchen window. I would love plants elsewhere, but after three cats, and plans to adopt felines soon, I know my house plants are safest at that window.
Good idea to keep them at the window. Luckily, none of my dogs ever bothered our plants!
When I first went out on my own in the 70s, anything wood and macrame and plants was de rigueur. It was a ‘natural’ environment inside my apartment; I even had a spider plant growing out of a seashell. But a lot of my plants didn’t make the moves from place to place…and I seemed to get busier and busier, almost resenting the time it took to care for and water the plants to where, eventually, over a long period of time, I had zero houseplants and was perfectly content, once I had a yard, to enjoy instead the plants growing in the ground outside of the houses. I tried getting more houseplants, oh, about 3 years ago but I wound up with those pesky gnats from the soil which I do NOT like flying around inside my home. So, at the moment, I only have one (tiny) potted plant inside, in my kitchen, and it’s loving the light shining down on it from a lamp mounted under the above-counter cupboards. I need to try again, with more houseplants inside because I’d read quite a bit about their benefits for indoor ‘air’ – indeed cleaning the air just like trees outside with oxygen. Once I get my house together after more summer remodeling, this is a must.
OMG, Claudia, I just got online and saw the headline that the singer Prince has died at age 57. No details yet. How many times since January have I turned on the computer to the same dismay and vocal angst, “Oh, no!” – do you remember any other year like this in the entertainment industry, and we’re not even six months into 2016 yet?! I don’t have any Prince LPs or CDs in my collection although I watched him a lot on music television when MTV was so new in the early 1980s. He was quite the showman and seemed to play very good electric guitar. His pop music was catchy; I loved that song about partying til it’s 1999. I believe over the years he mentored several upcoming singers, one of which I heard perform on cable a year or so ago, who I thought was a memorable and talented singer/songwriter named Kandace Springs. She spoke of Prince contacting her and how she couldn’t at first even believe it was him on the phone.
I keep thinking of that rock guy, maybe it was more than one [can’t remember], who ‘way back in January after one famous artist after another had passed, who was quoted as saying something to the effect of “could the reaper take a break?” and “could my rock idols please stop dying?” This creepy, somewhat-inevitable and sad progression of the last few months has prompted articles about what this is doing to the baby boomers…making us face our own mortality; we’re in the age category now…and we have to face the fact that Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney aren’t going to live forever.
I heard about his death this afternoon, right before I was going to leave for Hartford. I was shocked. Truly shocked. He was one of a kind and simply brilliant. What an untimely loss. He was much, much too young. Too much loss this year.
What a sweet story Claudia…I like houseplants too…my Mother always had lots of them…Today the doves cry…Have a safe trip to Hartford….
I’m already here in Hartford, Nancy. So, so sad about Prince.
My first plant was when I was 12 years old – a coleus plant. I was smitten. I’ve had plants ever since then and now have about 25 plants.
Tim graduates in a little over three weeks and then he will be moving back home at the end of July when his lease is up. I know it’s going to be a hard adjustment for all of us. There’s one plant in his bedroom. Don’t think he’ll take any interest. ;-)
That will be an adjustment, Melanie! Congratulations to Tim on his upcoming graduation!
What a sweet story! I love houseplants too. My most cherished plant is a Christmas Cactus that my grandmother started when I was a little girl in the 1950s!
My sister has my mom’s Christmas cactus, Debbie. She had it for years!
I love houseplants but feel like mine just manage to survive, rather than thrive, since we have tinted windows (to protect from the hot sun) and way too much dust floating around all the time.
That does make it difficult, but it sounds like you’re keeping them alive despite the conditions, Tammy.