Grateful Houseplants

(Although it feels frivolous to write about houseplants at such a sad and anxious time, I offer this post in the same spirit as those Italians who sang arias on their balconies at the peak of the pandemic.)

I like a grateful houseplant, the kind that perks up after a watering, and smiles greenly at me in the morning when I spritz it. Take the giant peace lily that I rescued from one of those big box stores just before the quarantine started. The margins of its leaves were being chewed up by an invisible pest or disease of some kind, but when I got it home I trimmed off the damaged bits and put it on a regimen of daily misting and weekly watering (it’s the only one of my houseplants that demands such frequent drinks). It promptly rewarded me by putting out a dozen shiny new leaves and even a couple of those weird white blossoms known as spathes. That’s what I mean by a grateful houseplant.

At about the same time, I also brought home a corn plant (Dracaena fragrans). It was an impressive specimen, taller than me, with thick, woody stems and several clumps of long, arching green-and-yellow striped leaves. Although the nursery tag did not mention this, I read online that I should never water Dracaena with city water. Even spritzing with it would cause the plant to develop brown spots that would expand until the leaf—and eventually the entire plant-- shriveled and died.

I looked at my Dracaena and realized that whoever had been caring for it in the store had not read those warnings, as many of the leaves were already speckled with tiny brown dots. The experts advised using distilled water, but that seemed both expensive and ungreen to me. The alternative was rain water. It doesn’t rain much in February in Vermont, but there is plenty of snow, so for weeks I scooped handfuls of snow into a bucket, brought it inside to melt, and used it to water and mist the Dracaena.

Along with the Dracaena I had also bought a lovely variegated Cordyline fruticosa, or Ti plant (what can I say? It was the depths of winter, and the plants were unbelievably cheap). Again, though the nursery tag didn’t mention it, the online pundits were unanimous against using tap water on the Cordyline, so I put it on the same melted-snow diet as the Dracaena, and expected that all would be well.

The spring sun finally melted the snow, and from then on at the first sign of rain I would rush out and put a bucket under the downspout. The rainwater seemed to be working, at least for the Cordyline, which was putting out bright pink leaves that mixed with green as they aged, to produce a lustrous coppery color. But the Dracaena did not react so well. The original brown pinpoints grew larger, and new spots appeared where my rainwater spritzes had landed. I rechecked the online sources, made sure I was doing everything right, and continued with the treatment.

When the Dracaena showed no signs of improvement, I moved it to the brightest spot in the sunroom, but it continued to droop. Day by day it looked more feeble, seeming to shrink into itself. I began to feel that I was running a houseplant hospice.

There is something about a sickly plant that drains the soul. Locked indoors with my dying Dracaena, I found myself avoiding the sunroom with its doom-laden atmosphere, and resenting the plant for not responding to my attentions. All my other green houseguests—the peace lily, the Ti plant, the aloe, the aglaonema, the jade, and the spider plants that I grow for Telemann to nibble—were glowing with health. But not the Dracaena. Every morning I would look at it, give it a few spritzes, and check the soil to make sure it wasn’t too wet or too dry. But the plant ignored me and continued to decline.

I could have simply gotten rid of it, but it was a living thing, and a large one at that. It had presence. For all I knew, it had feelings of some kind. I had brought it home and taken responsibility for it, and in exchange I hoped that it would bring badly needed cheer and vitality into my days. Like people who hesitate to euthanize a suffering pet, I clung to the expiring Dracaena.

And then one afternoon, in a fit of irritation not untinged with guilt, I dragged it outside, chopped up the leaves and stems, and scattered everything in the woods. Then I went indoors, sat down in the sunroom, opened my book, and basked in the aura of ease and contentment that radiated from my remaining, grateful plants.

Telemann and the Spider Plant

He glares down at me like a gargoyle from the top of the six-foot bookcase, lashes his tail, blinks. “What!” he says, and goes back to administering the death by a thousand cuts to my spider plant.

I have, since Telemann came to us from the mean streets of Philadelphia two years ago, disposed of most of my houseplants. The ASPCA’s list of plants that are toxic to cats lists 417 species (including, for some reason, catnip), so I am now down to a couple of citrus trees, a jade plant, and my once-flourishing spider plant, which is not poisonous because, if it were, Telemann would have died long ago.

When Telemann first arrived, the spider plant was busy making babies on a shelf in the sunroom. Swaying in the slightest breeze, those babies proved irresistible to a kitten who had, poor thing, until now been deprived of toys, stimulation, healthy food, veterinary care, love, and a warm home. As soon as he saw those plantlets, he knocked down a couple and ate them.

I moved the plant to the dining table, but by the next morning several more babies had perished. I thought that the sideboard would provide refuge, but it didn’t take long for Telemann to enact the botanical equivalent of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents.

I transferred the grieving mother plant to the highest spot in the cottage—the top of the tall bookcase in our bedroom. There wasn’t a lot of light there, but spider plants are tough, and after a while it started to look more cheerful. But that was before Telemann figured that it was only an easy five-foot leap (I made my husband measure it) from the nightstand to the plant. We covered the top of the bookcase with loops of packing tape, sticky side up, but that didn’t deter Telemann, who is probably the only cat on earth who doesn’t mind sticky tape on his paws.

Why are cats so amoral? Why do they do bad things and not care? Dogs try hard to be good, and if they sometimes fail, they suffer pangs of conscience. When Bisou used to do bad things, she always felt guilty. (Now that she’s ten, she hasn’t done anything bad in a long time.)

You’d think that after all I’ve done for him Telemann would let us have one measly spider plant to purify the air while we sleep. But reciprocity is not in his repertoire. If, as the cliché has it, dogs give humans unconditional love, cats expect unconditional love from us.

Still, despite his disastrous effects on my houseplants, I always manage to forgive Telemann, partly because in a weird way I admire his après moi le déluge attitude, his focus on his own desires, and his confounded nerve, which remind me of various autocrats, past and present. Luckily Telemann, with his velvety gray fur, little white paws, and slender body, is much easier on the eye. Plus he does have his sweet moments, when he becomes a purring, kneading machine, and exacts all the unconditional love I have to give.