The Power of Words: How I Can Bring Life to My Writing But Not to My Plants

Why do we try to grow things?

I am growing an apple tree from seeds I plucked from the interior of an apple I had for a snack. They are germinating on a piece of damp paper towel inside a recycled pudding jar, with a thin sheet of Saran Wrap over the top to create a friendly but slightly miasmic ecosystem. The odds of getting an actual apple tree out of this endeavor are slim to none—but I try anyway. All the time, I try. I love to grow things. I have the blackest of black thumbs, except when it comes to African violets. I can look at an African violet and it will lay down on its side and cock a brow and say, “come get me, you big galoot.”

Everything else I touch, I kill. Oh, it might not look at me and die, but it’s the rare fauna that comes across my delicate hands and lives to tell the tale.

Photo by Fumiaki Hayashi on Unsplash

Plants around the house that have moved out of middle age and are rapidly heading into social security include:

• A Christmas cactus I bought this year because it had riotous fuchsia blooms that immediately fell off and left me with spiky edges—but they’re still green;

• Three orchids in various stages of blooming decay. Two are still blooming, one hasn’t bloomed in five years but still has a green leaf. All three were gifts from sweet friends—where did I read the humble grocery store orchid is the ultimate passive-aggressive hostess gift? It made me laugh and I am determined never to let the gifted ones die, to various degrees of success;

• A corn tree from my parents’ house (so…it’s at least 35+ years old; it predates my husband) that died, killed dead as a doornail in a frost five years ago. We’re talking it broke in half and exposed a black stump like some sort of gangrenous pirate. We parked it in the garage because I am a sentimental fool and I felt SO guilty for leaving the tree on the deck and letting it get bit by the frost (it was nine feet tall at that point and had bloomed the fragrant stream of flowers three times and it was bent over scraping the ceiling of our guest room, so I took it outside and BAM, frost.) It then rebirthed itself into a small furry behemoth that loves to trail leaves along the edge of its pot for the cats to chew and puke up. It is now in time out up on a shelf, out of reach from the girls because, hello, poisoning the cats is not allowed in this house;

• Six African violets, two of which I bought to cheer me up during a deep depression for our first house in Nashville that are also 28+ years old and have volunteered two of the other four plants;

• A succulent I bought at Home Depot at the end of the pandemic that I was certain would withstand my benign neglect—reader, it has;

• A succulent gifted by my BFF in an adorable stone bunny pot that lives on a bookshelf in my office and is thriving despite me forgetting to water it, well, ever;

• One pathetically anemic stalk of a Queen Anne variegated fern (named Anne) I bought for my office macrame holder who is barely clinging to life no matter what I do. Anne was drowned in a house-sitting massacre and has never recovered;

• Two pots of petunias on the front porch who have the vapors and die at 3:00 p.m. every afternoon. When I go to get the mail, I’m convinced they're dead, but split a watering can between the two, and the little fakers spring back up like nothing ever happened.

This is a surprisingly long list considering I am the plant executioner, but check with me in a month and trust me, the tally will have changed, and not in their favor. That is why there are fake flowers scattered around. Lush peonies on the foyer table, stalks of cherry blossom in a blue hand-blown vase in my office, a spray of white roses on a clear table in a crystal vase (the vase was a wedding gift; tucked among them is a pen with a white rose cap, a treasure from another life that remains to remind me of before.) They might get dusty, and some get changed out seasonally. They are amiable to whatever I throw at them; they will not disappear on me.

Back to my teensy burgeoning apple tree.

I germinate seeds constantly. I am compelled. Lemon seeds, apple seeds, once even a pear. Avocados, pierced with toothpicks, balanced in cups of water. Chives in water in the fridge; garlic in small pots around the sink. I even once stabbed a rose stem through a potato and buried it in Miracle-Gro soil to create a new rosebush. Yeah. That one didn’t come close. The potato rotted, (shocking, I know) and dear God the smell. I am frisky as hell when it comes to onions in the pantry who decide to burst forth. There’s one on the back porch now that’s growing its own garden’s worth. We really need to get that in some dirt.

When I see the little green shoots, when the seeds open and rise and fight their way into being—damn, that is fascinating, isn’t it? I give them all the encouragement and love I can. I place them in the sun. I croon my dreams.

I want to be a homesteader. I want to be a gardener. I want to grow things that will feed and sustain my family. I have seeds, people, packet upon packet upon packet, so if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse and we need to start from scratch because the food supply has dried up (THREE DAYS TO ANARCHY!) then I’m your girl.

Ask me how many successes I’ve had.

There’s a big deep metaphor in here somewhere, and perhaps I’ll explore it more later. Because we haven’t even visited the outside yet, where I am also the garden grim reaper, except for the possessed lemon balm that marches across the many pots staged throughout the backyard like a demonic Napoleon on his last Russian campaign. And the sweet basil I place, tenderly, calmly, into the huge whisky barrel every year because I am Italian and if I don’t grow basil it is an insult to my forebears, and my husband loves pesto and I love to make my own sauce and sweet basil is the secret to every good sauce. And the hibiscus—Athena and Aphrodite—who I fear are dead twice over, first from an assault by the damn grumpus (my agent’s pet name for the groundhog who uses the garden as its own personal buffet line, damn the sneeze guards to gopher hell); second, the wild freeze over the holidays that killed all the laurels in Nashville. (They’re coming back, don’t pull them up. Just cut them down to six inches and wait five years for a return to their previous glory.) And Maplethorpe, the Japanese maple, our first truly expensive tree that was a birthday gift from my parents, who made it through the frost and is doing his damndest to show off some burgundy leaves for everyone who passes. He seems very tired this year. A new neighbor saw me stroking his leaves and praising his resilience and gave me quite a strange look, but he needs the love.

---

An aside: Mr. Ellison and I used to live in a neighborhood that was quite loud and not very private, so we decided to buy some thujas to plant along the fence row on either side to create a small forest to hide in. Our lot backed to woods; this would create a three-sided barrier of glorious evergreens. (If you don’t already know, I grew up in Colorado, where it is green all year round, and I miss that.) I ordered 20 established thujas off Amazon—each two feet—shocked at how awesome the price was. I received 20 seedlings, each two inches tall. Yes, I misread the description. It wasn’t like we could send these poor babies back; that would kill them dead. They were on their last legs anyway, panting in their little shadowy box, confused to be stolen from the sun, shoved in cardboard, and mailed to a stranger. They needed to get in the ground STAT if they had a chance at living.

UPS delivers late. It was already six. It was early spring, before daylight savings, so it was also dark. But there was a full moon. And we had flashlights. We got the last bebe into the ground at midnight, under the milky shine of that full moon. I am not a full-time sole-practitioner Dianic witch, but at the time, I was pretty intense on all things Wicca because of a book I was researching, so we did a little dance for their safety and growth, and went to bed, feeling we’d bewitched the backyard into a haven to watch over us forever.

I watered those trees like my life depended on it. Weeks of watering. Pruning. Putting down pine straw to keep them warm in the winter. Cajoling and encouraging and touching. (I like to touch my plants. That’s probably why they die.)

We lost a few over the years, which were promptly replaced. When we moved, five years later, they were taller than the privacy fence. When we drove by the old house recently, just to say hello and let it know we haven’t forgotten it, those fuckers were 25-feet tall, lush and thick, an actual forest. Our plans, realized. I felt very proud.

Let’s be honest, they were also not dead because my husband touched them. Where I am the back death, he is milk and honey and frangipani and ambrosia, all wrapped in a hot southern package of a man who knows how to garden. What a ridiculous turn-on. Apparently, I like to eat and look at pretty things, and when we met, my DNA said this is the one who will feed you forever and grow your flowers, and I was lost.

---

I, though, am the strange soul who ADORES fresh flowers but weeps when I have to throw them away. I thank their dead little hearts for their service, for bringing me joy, for marking the event—the anniversary, the book launch, the birthday, Valentine’s day, just because—and swallow hard when they disappear into the kitchen Hefty bag. It’s just not fair! Why can’t they live forever? Why can’t we live forever? Is this why I am so compelled to try and grow things? Am I trying to escape death? Trying to throw a life preserver to anything and everything to slow the march of time, that inexorably beast who doesn’t care how much you love or are loved but chews you in its fiery maw regardless, unfairly or as a blessing, the greatest egalitarian of all? A fool’s errand, but I am happy to play the fool here. I despise change. I want everything—every one—to be happy. Healthy. Together. Immortal. The phoenix from the ashes, like the crazy corn tree upstairs and my self-propagating violets. What do the trees and the plants know about this life that we do not understand? What do they whisper to one another as the breeze plays through their beings? Life is impermanent. But pieces of you will live on forever?

I don’t know. I’d like to think they are sentiently alive. I clearly saw too many Disney movies as a child.

Anyway, psycho plant killer, qu’est-ce que c’est, must leave you here, because now, I need to go write words on a story I am growing. Successfully, at last, because for months it has been wizened and dry; dormant on the page. I’ve pushed it. I’ve prodded. I’ve begged and cursed. But it has not budged. Until suddenly, two weeks ago, when the days started getting longer and the pansies weren’t fainting as often and I had ninety other projects that needed my attention, it burst open like the tiny apple seed in the pudding jar and screamed “NOW!”

I bid you adieu because I am nothing but the servant of my plants, be they green on a windowsill, lurking on the page in black and white, or growing slowly in my soul, and they must be tended regardless of the outcome. I have faith I can keep them alive.

© 2023 by J.T. Ellison. All rights reserved.