About

TL;DR: Plants, not perfection. (After all, the best-laid plants of mice & men…)

This is a blog for everyone who–like me–ever thought they had the opposite of a green thumb, and who let that keep them from having or growing plants. I wish I had started before last year, and I hope you will, too.

thumb with smiley face and plant in the background — Your thumb is already greener than you think.

Raised-bed garden in Seattle — My first raised-bed garden, off to a late start in May 2020.

If you had told me this time last year that one year later I would be “giving my Calathea a spa day” and that I was “starting seeds with peat coirs for a raised-bed garden,” I would have gently suggested that you seek immediate psychiatric assistance (or, possibly, that Future Me should do the same).

Right after that, I’d have asked “Who is Calathea, and why am I paying for her to get a facial?” followed by, “Who is this Pete Coir dude, and whatever he wants to do with his own bed is fine, but why drag me into it??”

Peat pods, or peat coirs — Not a guy named Pete, or a donut: peat coirs for starting seeds for this year’s vegetable garden.

This time last year, I had never planted a seed or kept a houseplant alive for longer than two weeks. I assumed, based on The Incident With the Ficus and other reasons, that I was something like Kryptonite to most houseplants.

ficus alii with cat — This, however, IS my house, my plant, my cat, and…my rubber eagle head wearing a fez. Don’t over-think it.

I also assumed that being an “plant person” required a perfectly clean house, with white carpets and furniture –the kind of home where nobody has ever heard of cat barf or spaghetti sauce or red wine. The kind of place where you imagine smooth jazz is playing in the background at all hours, and nobody ever watches TV or plays video games.

That, dear reader, is NOT my house. And if it’s not yours either, you’re in the right place.

Houseplants are shockingly non-judgmental. They don’t care if you leave your stuff all over the place, and have several months worth of unread copies of The New Yorker lying around.

Similarly, outdoor vegetable gardens are surprisingly easy, and you don’t have to have a ton of space or perfect light to raise a bumper crop of summer vegetables. If I can do it in the Seattle shade in a relatively small back yard, you can do it to.

Just get a plant and put it in a pot, or in the ground. They know what to do, even if you don’t. You’ll screw some of it up, and that’s okay. It’ll be the best mistake you ever made.