Your plants - decorations or dependents?

For those of you who grow things, how do you feel about them? Are they decorations, to be changed/tossed/removed at your whim? Are they living beings who depend on you?

I fall into the later category. Most of my plants are cacti or succulents. While originally, they were purchased for decoration, I have grown attached to all of them. Now I have plants that are old enough to buy beer. I am surprised by how I feel about these spiny towers of chlorophyll.

When we remodeled our home, and all the indoor cactus space was eliminated, I felt rather sad, knowing that many of these guys were not going to survive life outdoors.

I have had plants become so successful that they outgrew their space. Finding a new home for them is always a bit of a bummer. And when they propagate, I find that even if I have no space for all the baby plants, I grow them and keep as many alive as I can, giving away whatever I can as if they are frickin' puppies. Odd, considering they started out as decorations.

So how about you? How do you feel about your plants?

 

Nineteen years ago, I decided that I would plant a garden that would last forever. I bought books, I wrote down what grew when and every week in a note book, I spent money at the garden center the way most people buy groceries.
My plants and flowers grew and blossomed as my kids grew and blossomed. And just like my kids, they became a pain in the ass. They grew over each other, got leggy and too big for their britches. Unlike my kids, after all these years, I can simply dig'em up and toss'em out and start over, which is just what I am doing.

/me takes a flying leap across the room to give Clavus a big o;' leg hug and then realize....


I'm 3 inches taller and 60 lbs heavier than he is.


Sorry, dude....

 

Our house is a Darwin experiment for plants.

 

I used to love plants. Now I have no time for them. I have one jade plant that my daughter bought me for xmas. That's enough.

 

I raised and nurtured two young children who have grown into two beautiful, healthy adults. All my houseplants die in relatively short time, once they enter into my care . I think that answers the OP's question.

 

Hey, I'm up to 135 lbs now. I'm a big boy.

 

I have a few plants indoors. I would be arrested for plant abuse if it was a crime. But, most of the cacti and palm trees still are surviving in Ohio.

 

My christmas cacti died within two weeks. But my daughter bought me a poinsettia and my son sent me an orchid for mothers day.
I'm trying my hardest to keep them both alive; the orchids are looking better with Zen's advice, but the poinsettia has seen better days.

I use to do very well with cannabis in the 80's and I have great veggie gardens. So why is it so hard to keep indoor plants alive.
Whats the difference?

 

I live in a jungle. I don't have to do much of anything to have lush tropical plants around the house all year round.

That said, I don't treat them like dependents. Even when I lived in Canada.

 

I grow snake plants very well. I've got the grandchildren of the one I was gifted when I was 16 (so they are decades old). We don't have good light either with northern exposure and only partial south due to shade from the adjacent condo bldg. Since I live in a part of the world with but a few months of outdoor greenery I like having plants indoors. Most are cacti and succulents but I do have an African Violet that my son gave me as a school-made (clay-pot decorated) Mother's Day gift. I thought African Violets were 'fussy' but this one just keeps growing and I love that it begins to flowers in early spring and does so through the summer.
I would say I've an attachment to my plants. I'm here at home a lot so I tend to them; there's one now that spouse bought and it is simply not thriving and I feel badly about that. I tend to with plants, much like with songs, associate them with a certain time period (when I got them) or person (who gave them to me) so most all of them have meta meanings.

 

I had to look these up. I've seen them but didn't know what they were called. They might just be the plants for me.

"Handles neglect well"

 

I wish I were better with plants but I tend to forget them. There is this tight space between placing them where they will not suffer from animal or human traffic which tends to mean that it is out of the way and I become neglectful. I also have an issue of having a space where they can be given adequate light.

I feel badly when plants are gifted to me only to suffer neglect. My loving SO was kind enough to send me a little bonzai for Valentine's Day "because flowers die and I wanted something that would keep and represent our love." In truth, I don't know if it was dead when it reached me but it was shortly after. Currently, I have an aloe which lives through my neglect in a spot in my kitchen, a small succulent garden which seems to be doing okay (the directions say I only need soak it once a month) and a small jade plant started for me by a coworker. I hope I can manage at least those for a while. I do much better with an outdoor garden.

 

Absolutely. And they grow like the dickens. My dad was actively trying to kill them off as my mom inherited that original snake-plant when I packed bags and hit the road for Cali at age 18. She took care of them for decades, they even survive multiple moving. Later, when my mom was on the downward slide he would complain that he 'could not kill those damn things!' The two large plants I have came from a cutting I took when I visited them and brought it home in my suitcase.

 

I think I will have to give one of these a try!

 

Yep. That is how one can be sort of 'attached' to a plant! (for me)

 

My home is a funeral parlor for plants. The most recent death was a mini succulent, to whom I gave nothing to suck. I need those air plants, or venus fly traps,
that can live off the flying passers-by. I feel pity for them, when they finally have reached the point of no return, and leave them in my living room, so that
they can retain some level of dignity before I trash them.

The only ones I can grow are those Pathos plants. They don't need much water and alert you when they do.