I started buying houseplants about four years ago. No research went into it, I bought just picked two that I liked from the grocery store and promptly killed one. brought them home. This proved fatal for one of them. I think I overwatered it. Or maybe it got infested by some tiny plant killers. malevolent insects. I don’t know. I didn’t try very hard to save it. I wanted my apartment to have that leafy, green leafy look but I didn’t want to sink time and effort into research. making it happen. I wanted the reward, but not the work.

Apart from that early casualty, however, my approach of low involvement has worked pretty well. The other plant – a lemon-lime dracaena – has thrived. lived and thrived in the years since I brought it home. Multiple times I’ve repotted it multiple times and today it stands today at two or three times its original height. I’m proud of it, somewhat. Several of its leaves are partially at their edges browned with decay due to some reason I’ve neglected to investigate, but nonetheless investigate. Nonetheless, it lives on.

Every now and then I get the motivation to watch YouTube videos to learn how to perform certain tasks of plant care. The people who make these videos tend to chat at the camera for a while, stroking and poking their plants as they slowly approach the subject at hand. I watch these videos impatiently, jumping forward with irritation until I find the bits of information I need. I want to get the task done as quickly as possible. I find it difficult to enjoy the process.

It’s a funny thing to find yourself resenting chores you created for yourself. Nobody and no thing require that I have plants in my home and yet I have several. Five in the bedroom, one in the living room, three in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, and seven in the office. Many of these are second or third generation houseplants that I planted from snippings I trimmed and propagated in water.

I stopped buying plants a while ago and yet I keep accumulating more of them. The list above is almost twenty in number without including my biggest and oldest plants, which are back in my apartment in Seattle, 238km away. Over there I have my lemon-lime dracaena, a sizeable monstera, a growing ficus, a tentacled pothos, and several other smaller plants. The better job I do at caring for my plants, the more they thrive and the greater my responsibilities become.

Watering plants is a surprisingly effortful task, especially when you have to water many all at once. For some, I stand on tiptoes and extend my arm rigidly overhead to let a stream of water arc into the pot. For others, I do a mini deadlift and lug their fragile figures to the tub. Any spills I mop up on my hands and knees. A long way from lounging on the couch and enjoying my living room. Sometimes, I feel that the work their upkeep demands has surpassed the pleasure they give me.

For a long time I accumulated plants and grew them with the aim of making my living room lush with green leaves. Eventually, I realized the vision. And I loved it. But, as is often the case, the happily ever after is a lot more tedious than its still image suggests.

I am living a weird life. It isn’t one I dreamed up for myself, but one that has developed bit by bit over the years from the conditions imposed on me by life. Enviously I’ve held onto everything in my grasp and years later I find myself sprawled across two countries, in two apartments, both full of houseplants. This abundance has enriched my life while encumbering it. Perhaps it’s time to lighten the burdens I’ve put upon myself.