A writing prompt from Journal Inspirations
What do you like to grow? Do you have a green or a brown thumb?
I have a brown thumb. I guess it came with my name 🙂
In any event, most houseplants do not survive our tender care. Besides that, we have housecats and cats and plants often do not mix (or when they do, it is to the continued detriment of the plants). So, all plants have been banished outdoors, where they mostly fend for themselves.
On our front porch, we have four happy jade plants in increasing sizes; we refer to them as Papa Jade, Mama Jade, and the Baby Jades. Papa Jade is rather enormous. They enjoy the porch as they get just enough sun, just enough shade, and on foggy days like today, plenty of moisture. On those days, they are especially green and shiny.
We have a very happy back garden, filled with year-round roses (Flower Carpet), lilacs (currently blooming; the white is the earliest and most prolific), Mexican purple sage (hummingbirds love it), bottlebrush bush (bright red, another hummingbirds favorite), ground cover of various sorts (mostly myrtle, aka vinca or periwinkle), and a very happy group of volunteer Red Hot Pokers that bloom every summer (yet another hit with the hummingbirds). We also have an ornamental plum that unfortunately doesn't flower much (I think it gets too much shade) but has nice red leaves through the spring and summer.
We ascribe to the "hack and hew / benign neglect" method of gardening. Plants either survive and thrive or die. We water the yard when the weather had been warm and dry; we hack back the sage on one side of the walk and the roses on the other; we trim out dead blossoms or stalks as the need arises and otherwise, basically, the garden maintains itself.
Our neighbors up the hill have commented on how pleasant it is to look down at our garden. We've managed to plant things (or they've planted themselves) that provide something in bloom throughout most of the year. The little brown birds love it, the cats love to watch the little brown birds, and we love to watch it all, so everyone is happy and it all works out. I think the plants are happy too.
Slightly Off KIlter 
One response to “With Silver Bells and Cockle Shells”
AUTHOR EMAIL: kbwilson92@yahoo.com
It must be the name – because I have brown thumbs too. Anything that’s doing well is doing well by itself – not from my doing. While we have few houseplants we do have a 7 foot diffenbacia and some lucky bamboo that is very leafy – everything else limps along. I don’t like to water outside – and in Dallas, if you’re going to have flowers, you have to water. So I have easy native stuff. Rosemary, french lavendar and lantana. We also plant one sweet potato vine each summer and let it fill in the area around the bird bath. Everything else came with the house and is still alive so it must be doing OK.
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