When plants repel the planter

My mother had a green thumb which I unfortunately have not inherited. She maintained a beautiful garden and lovingly grew many varieties of flowering plants and fruiting trees. I love plants and am always pleased to admire flowers and fruits but for some reason plants do not respond to me.

When I pot or re-pot a plant, it immediately dies. When I water a plant lovingly, I either end up overdoing it or under-doing it with the result that the poor plant has to leave the world. My garden plants visibly cringe when they see me approaching with a water-can to water them or a pair of scissors to trim them. “Here she comes, here she comes!” the cry goes out but the poor things, being rooted to the ground, cannot even run away!

I know next to nothing about gardening and my attempts to collect compost one year were hilarious. I watched several YouTube videos on it and imagined that I had become an expert in composting. I got my husband to buy me two large plastic bins with lids. I filled one with fruit and vegetable waste, dried flowers and leaves, tea leaves and egg shells and kept it to sun in the backyard.

The idea was that by the time the second bin filled, the first one would have converted the waste into ash. But I had not read anywhere that one has to make holes in the waste bin to drain water and so the waste rotted away, happily floating in a smelly and disgusting water. So I threw everything away and decided to let my plants survive without compost.

Another reason I am such a poor gardener is that I love weeds and hate to rip them out. I admire their will to survive and their persistence and tenacity to grow. Nobody cares for them. They depend only on rains yet they manage to grow out of cracks and crevices in the cement, on the ground, on walls and roofs defying all odds. Some climbers and creepers grow happily on electricity poles, garden gates and even on trees. Some produce beautiful flowers in different hues like yellow and red and shades of purple starting with delicate lilacs, lavenders and mauves to deep purples. It seems they deplete the soil of nutrients. But they are beautiful, strong and resilient and I love them!

But even I have to draw the line sometimes. For instance the grass had become so thick and tall in our backyard that I worried that a big cat might easily stay hidden it. I mean if a leopard can make an open space like the Belgaum Golf Course it’s home, then why not the tall grass in our yard? Snakes and scorpions could also easily occupy the undergrowth. So one day, my husband engaged a man to trim the growth with a weedcutter. As the machine whined loudly, chopping and cutting everything in its path with its whirring blades, I felt sick as the the smell of dead plants filled the air. It was a heart wrenching and cruel necessity to keep ourselves safe.