House Girlfriend

When I first started House Girlfriending full time, I was certain it would be no time at all until I was the Mary Poppins of my own domain, aka Practically Perfect in Every Way. 

And, to be honest, I’m not doing a terrible job: though the decor comes slowly, the apartment looks lovely, it stays clean, the meals get cooked- and mostly very well. But I had visions of a garden, a growing swath of herbs I would nightly throw casually into our meals. I had visions of a patio full-to-overflowing with ferns and succulents, a veritable greenhouse in our apartment. I had visions of home-grown flowers I would cut and bring to friends’ houses for dinner parties as hostess gifts. But the dinner parties never quite materialized- and neither did my flowers.

I was doing quite well at first: when The Boyfriend and I moved in together, we planted seeds, we bought a few plants and the summer treated them nicely; we had blooms and leaves where before there was nothing… but winter came. (Yes, even in Los Angeles.) And I decided to try my hand at houseplants. My mistake.

Here is where my lack of Mary Poppins-ing really comes into play: what I have in culinary flare, I obviously lack in green thumbing. I have killed, or very nearly murdered, every plant that enters our home. Even the succulents! And those everyone says take no effort at all. But I have seen them: day after day, committing suicide just to escape life in my I’m Trying So Hard To Make It Beautiful Home.  

I don’t know what to do. It is hard for a person like me, trying so hard to be perfect at everything, to admit that I am failing- and miserably so. But I am. Like an overbearing mother, I am giving too much light when all that is needed is darkness. Giving too much water, when all that is needed is dry soil.

A kind Tumblr reader, a horticulturalist, has lately given me some advice: not all plants want sunlight, test your water for chlorine, please stop drowning your succulents. And I have no choice but to listen, to admit that I do not have all the answers, that, for some things, Mary Poppins-ing does not come naturally. Not yet.