How I learned to stop killing houseplants
I grew up among Californian oaks and wildflowers; after the loss of my father, I developed a green thumb in a tiny Queens apartment I grew up in a snarl of ancient oaks on a 9-acre hillside property in the sleepy town of Atascadero, California. Each spring brought a parade of daffodils and the subtle fragrance of honeysuckle. Stepping outside the front door, I saw a vista of eucalyptus and sycamore, pockmarked by wild poppies. If I craned my ear, I could hear a faint tractor or the buzz of a weed wacker.
The beauty was my father?s choice. He was an asthmatic child from a smog-choked area south of Los Angeles. He couldn?t go out for a quart of milk without wheezing and running faint. Decades later, when it was time to move his young family north, the realtor led my parents up a cumbersome hill in the middle of pastoral nowhere. It was perfect. Largely on their own, they pruned, planted, and landscaped until it was breathtaking. It was a quirky, exquisite backdrop. Once, my father lost his Amazon parrot for days when the bird roosted in an especially generous, mossy oak. In the dog days of summer, my friends and I raced winter sleds through the weeds and thistles until we careened across the road, my father filming and nearly collapsing with laughter. I spent so many afternoons in the garden as he rattled off every perennial, annual, and biannual.
At my core, I was an indoorsy, computer-bound child who was into books and rock music. I rarely, if ever, had the urge to p...
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