Coming To Terms With Fake Plants
I saw a potted plant out of the corner of my eye and for a moment, I thought it was real. I was in Hobby Lobby so somewhere deep down I knew it was impossible, but ever-so briefly I forgot myself. As the truth of its artificial condition dawned on me, I hastily scooped it up, resolved to take it home.
As a child, my mother would commission me to help her plant flowers around our mailbox each Spring. The yellow and pink blooms of the annuals would last roughly a week. Though her ability to nurse flowers never improved, we tried every year none-the-less.
My first fake plant, the one from Hobby Lobby. Most likely not my last.
Few things bring me more joy than greenery and flowers. And so it is most inconvenient that I inherited my mother’s incompatibility with stewarding plants. I can’t even sustain succulents. SUCCULENTS. Friends will gift me beautiful potted things that they will ultimately see shriveled and dying on some mantle in my house. It’s embarrassing. And while I have promised myself to improve, I’ve only managed to prolong the inevitable by a few weeks.
Though my alter ego cycles to her job in a florist shop every day where she has the touch of life, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am not skilled in this way and should allow the previously scorned artificial plants into my life—no matter what Joanna Gaines may say. That moment in Hobby Lobby, though it may seem impulsive, was the work of a life-time.
Sure I want to have a perfect home, like the ones in Magnolia Magazine: neat, picturesque, brimming with the CO2 conversion and life-bringing process of plants growing all around me. More so, I want to be the person who keeps those kinds of homes: responsible, diligent, never messy or cluttered, free to devote myself to such values, and (let’s not forget) rich. But I am none of those things. My dash-and-go state of being cannot be cured. I’ve tried. But I like my home and I like myself, even if that means fostering potted growth is not a realistic option for me. At long-last I have come to terms with fake plants. And if ever I start to mentally mock their tackiness, I just think: Get over yourself, Rachelle. It’s just a piece of decor.
This fake plant really has been liberating. I smile every time I pass it, and isn’t that the point?