Brown thumb

From a young age, I’ve been rather fascinated by raising plants. A plant is, in some ways, like an inanimate pet. Properly nurtured, it grows and thrives.

Despite this enthusiasm, I have never really been very good at keeping my plants alive. My first potted plant - a unique looking combination of rounded, waxy looking leaves, soft, cactus-y growth, and little red flowers – sat atop the bookshelf in my north-facing bedroom. Without sufficient sunlight, the cactus-looking part of it immediately died and the rest of it remained a dull shade of olive for years, cascading over the lip of the pot and shedding dried leaves onto my unvacuumed floor.

The next plant in my life, an evergreen sapling brought home from school on Earth Day in 4th grade, swiftly succumbed to the lawn mower. In college, I had to send two successive Ikea plants home due to lack of sunlight – Akimbo and Charlie. Luckily both recovered, and Charlie now adorns my sun-drenched bookshelf.

Recovery at the hands of my dad is a common theme for my plants. Growing up, I germinated a lemon seed in a plastic cup lined with a wet paper towel (a trick I have attempted to recreate, unsuccessfully, many times since). It has since grown into a tall, skinny lemon tree, kept indoors and incapable of bearing fruit because of the Maryland climate. But, if you rub your fingers against its leaves, it smells like lemons!

Ignoring past failures, I decided this spring that I very much wanted to grow a basil plant. Dreams of a summer filled with homemade pesto and caprese salad spurred me to buy a packet of seeds. In early May, I filled a pot with soil, stuck in the seeds (ignoring instructions on proper spacing), added some water and set it in front of a window to grow.

At first, my basil seemed to be doing quite well. Dozens of little green sproutlets sprung out of the dirt, growing taller every day. I went to Germany feeling quite satisfied with myself, sure of the fact that we would be enjoying freshly picked basil by June. But the plant stopped growing. The shoots began to wither and die, and continued to do so all summer. Now, a whopping four and a half months after planting, only one sprig of basil remains. It is about two inches tall, and has maybe three small leaves. On the bright side, it seems to be growing, which leads me to believe that maybe the packet was right about needing several inches in between each plant. In the meantime, however, we’ve still been buying $4 packets of basil at the store.

Uncowed, Steve and I have already begun to discuss plans for next spring. We have a couple planter boxes for our deck’s railing at home, and I’ve been thinking that they would look awfully good adorned with a host of fresh herbs. Why stop at basil when you could have mint and dill too? To solve the pesky problem of my brown thumb, we’ll buy pre-grown baby plants from the farmers’ market in early spring. And give them plenty of space to expand. And lots of sunshine and water. And maybe, just maybe, next summer I’ll have a success story to share.