Vegephobe

I don't like plants.

For a long time, I thought that I was merely incompetent with them - they invariably wither and die under my care, so I've learned not to throw good money after bad. But that's not it. I actually don't like them. (Perhaps they perceive my dislike and shrivel up not so much from dehydration as from emotional thirst.)

First of all, I'm suspicious of how much water they drink. I've been pouring a cup of water on my hardy mums every night, and though they are visibly drying up and dying, I refuse to believe that they actually require more. (They're like Dan on Survivor, shoveling in the rice and corn and worrying about waking up hungry at midnight.) All the other potted mums in the neighbourhood are still orange and yellow, not the crispy brown shade mine have gradually turned. I am starting to suspect that my neighbours are replacing their mums every couple of weeks to keep them looking fresh.

The outdoor plants I can tolerate, though - they, at least, are in their natural environment. My beef is with the indoor plants. I received two of these as housewarming gifts. One I actually almost like: it's by the front door, which is almost as good as being outside. The other, however, epitomizes everything that is wrong with indoor plants: it's a leatherette treasure chest full of dark green leaves. For awhile it sat by the kitchen sink (which at least made it easy to water), but then I had the brainstorm of moving it into the bathroom, where I can glare at it each night before bed.

Interior designers love to bring the outdoors in (a decorating strategy I always trace for my students in Anne of Green Gables, where Anne's influence over Marilla is measured by the steady encroachment of apple blossoms into her bedroom, first in a cracked vase on the bureau and eventually on a dainty wallpaper). I myself prefer to keep the outdoors out. I would not have wanted to be one of the homeowners on that early episode of Trading Spaces where crazy Genevieve hung an entire bedroom wall with moss. (When the unfortunate couple was led in, blindfolded, they wrinkled their noses at the smell.)

The real problem with plants, I think, is the leaves. Cut flowers I can enjoy, especially the big Gerbera daisies with their sturdy, leafless stems. But the profusion of leaves in a potted plant always strikes me as vaguely depressing. Leaves are such blatant reminders of mortality: they dry up, fall off, turn yellow or brown - or, alternatively, they grow grotesquely huge, dwarfing the still-pretty flowers they surround. Leaves are a no-win situation.

My bathroom plant has managed to survive nearly two months of my abuse and neglect. It gets a dousing of water every three or four days, enough to keep it a kind of limbo between death and life. If it finally manages to die, I'll have a nice spot for some knick-knacks. Not candles, though - I hate those too, but that's another post.