TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I have a confession: I want to have a green thumb, but I can’t, for the life of me, keep house plants alive. Other people’s apartments look more like greenhouses or gardens, they’re filled with so many plants, and my writing room is completely wrapped in windows just begging to be filled with hanging leaves and vines. The green would be good for my soul, especially during the long Midwestern winters.

But it’s not going to happen. I have a brown thumb. Or, as one of my kids generously said when they were younger: “Mommy, you have a soft thumb. You’re good at taking care of people.” I like that — and I’ll take a soft thumb over a brown thumb any day. I am good at taking care of people — and even my dog is beyond pampered — but the plants in my house are constantly fighting for their lives. 

Even the succulents are alarmed. I think they know that I once killed an air plant. An air plant! They’re supposed to be the lowest maintenance plant you can have, and I managed to kill one. My “soft thumb” was no consolation to that poor, spidery-looking thing. These days, I have just one little spiny cactus and one ficus holding strong, and I feel like I’m jinxing us by even mentioning them. Please send your best wishes their way.

As you might imagine, I’m not an outdoor gardener, either. But I do have plenty of plants growing in my yard, most of them “volunteers.” They pop up as surprises from seeds carried by birds or the wind, or left behind from previous seasons. Unintended and self-grown. My neighbor’s yard, for example, is completely bordered in Rose of Sharon — tall, flowering plants that the bees love. As the flowers have fallen onto my side of the fence, or as the seeds have blown over, new plants have sprouted up all over my yard. They’re invasive, like the mint I have to rip out every year as it spreads in a dense patch along my back patio. I haven’t planted these things, but they grow anyway. 

Today’s poem reminds me that even though “volunteer plants” may create extra work for me, I respect their hardiness, their resourcefulness and their ability to take root.

Geranium
by Karen Solie

It seemed needlessly cruel

that I couldn’t coax even the hardiest,

homeliest, dullest of plants to grow

in the one west-facing window

of that place, with its air conditioner, sealed

with duct tape, that didn’t work,

and its mouse-hole, stuffed with steel

wool, that did. And an equally

needless kindness even more

unbearable, that unexpected flowering

inside the cheap circumference

of the pot while I was nearly

bedridden, of seeds borne on a broad wind

that flew in, and volunteered.

“Geranium” by Karen Solie from PIGEON © 2009 Karen Solie. Used by permission of House of Anansi Press.