Carly has a rather tumultuous relationship with plants. Well, maybe, ambiguous is a better way to describe this. In recent years, she has been more taken with the putative positive effects of growing plants. She has a number of friends who have allotments, but this level of commitment seems over the top to Carly.
She is happy to devote a lot of time to knitting as this is her hobby, to work as this pays her wages and to eating as this sustains her. Often, she approaches growing plants with suspicion. Previously she was often given orchids. These were from friends coming over for meals. They always look nice and let’s be honest – they don’t cost a whole lot and seem exotic. But however hard she tries to look after them they all keel over and die. She dusts them and talks to them, and she tries to under water them as she is told most indoor plants die because of over water. She has a friend who goes around every Sunday night at 1930 and gives each of her orchids one cube of ice. Carly rather likes this idea, but she doesn’t have an icemaker. She thinks only filling up the ice cube tray for limited orchid plant watering seems a bit of a waste when really ice cubes are best used in gins and tonics.
But there is another reason it is ok for these orchids to turn up their noses and pop their clogs. Carly has been giving all her half dead or actually mostly dead orchids to Jean for a great number of years. Jean is her ex-step-mother-in-law, and this sustains their relationship keeping it on the straight and narrow. It seems to keep both of them satisfied. Jean can bring this ragbag collection of orchids back to life. Carly can pretend that she is delighting Jean with a present that, really, she is offloading and didn’t pay for anyway. Carly thinks having people over for dinner costs a whole lot more than the price of a measly orchid. And then Carly feels guilty as Jean rarely comes over for meals. Carly makes a note to herself to rectify this. It isn’t Jean’s fault that Carly is divorced.
When she was a child, Carly grew sweet peas, but they were never fragrant. She also grew runner beans as the rabbit liked them. But this rabbit went the way of many pets dying of old age and Carly never liked beans much anyway. However, Carly has picked up quite a bit of knowledge along the way. She has quite successfully grown herbs. She is proud of this and anyway it is super easy to replace them if they don’t prosper, as you can often buy them really cheaply in the local supermarket. And yes, she has remembered to keep those pesky mint plants in their pots, so they don’t take over with their roots. Carly likes to imagine these mint roots having secret plans and clever tricks (thanks Raoul Dahl) to take over the garden. They meet at night and confer on how to invade the rest of the garden with their imperialist tendencies. It is known as the great mint root advancement plot. Really this train of thought is ridiculous. Plants of all things are meant to be grounding. They are not there to promote fanciful thought, with your mind wandering off in ridiculous directions. Carly begins to chastise herself but in this new era of looking after yourself, she decides that she must desist from this too. Really this is getting hopeless.
Carly has had limited success with growing vegetables. Her friends from Dorset gave her Jerusalem artichokes to grow. And they are very easy to grow but they are super muddy and pretty small. All that effort and a huge amount of wind as a result and not a lot else. However, she is very committed to eating plants. Since completing Lifebook, which is a 12-step personal development course, she has had a green smoothie every morning for breakfast. Very healthy. Carly is very pleased with herself. That is because she is pretending she isn’t off for a coffee as soon as she has downed the green smoothie. But she is. Carly is much more obsessed with coffee than plants and she supposes if she lived in hotter climes, she could grow coffee. Now there’s a thought….
Carly has done a number of courses that involve plants. Flowers to be more specific. Once she did an ikebana course to display flowers in a Japanese style. The course said it was to bring out the inner qualities of flowers to express emotion. Carly liked that and carefully arranged the flowers in trios. But it felt too minimalist for Carly.
She also went on a kokedama course. You take a houseplant and cover the roots in compost for the inner layer, moss as the middle layer and string as the outer layer. You can display this in a handmade macramé string holder but Carly, like most people, last did this craft in the 1970’s and she feels this is rather unstylish! So, she puts her kokedama plant on an enormous square glass plate. And it is doing very well thank you very much.
Most recently she went on a course to make flower headdresses. Usually this is for people at hen nights who make them to wear at a wedding. Carly isn’t sure why she booked this course as she has just got divorced and there are no wedding bells on the horizon. It was a very rainy afternoon, and she was the only one on the course. “Great” thought Carly. They won’t have to go at the speed of the slowest participant. Carly is fast. Actually, superfast and really has no patience for slow coaches. On this course, Carly excelled herself and she was so fast, she made two flower headdresses instead of one and gave the spare one to her cousin who had also just got divorced. Carly is a bit jealous of her cousin as she has obviously moved on much faster than Carly and has a boyfriend. Hmmmmmmmmmmm muses Carly. She wishes she was slightly less competitive. She is happy about the being speedy, mind.
Carly does like to hug trees, but she often forgets to do this. Also, in spring, she has tree pollen allergy, and this means she gets very itchy and sneezy. She feels that she might get relief by taking out her eyeballs to give them a good scratch and then replace them. Luckily, she has trained as a doctor and has been to medical school, although it was a while ago. She does remember removing eyeballs leads to permanent blindness. Carly has often wondered if it would be worse to be deaf or blind. Really, she isn’t sure. But maybe an antihistamine would be a better option for her in the spring? Carly is unable to answer that last question she set herself. Instead, Carly hugs people. Even when it isn’t allowed. During lockdown no one was in the office where Carly worked. This meant she could walk around liked she owned the joint! Of course, this was short lived in the end. But it did introduce her to a new plant at work. Tradescantia. It has wonderful dark green and purple leaves with a silver pearlescent shimmer. Carly became obsessed about it. Every day she went and broke off a bit and popped it into water. Roots were quickly established, and Carly took them home to grow. Besides coffee and knitting, Carly is obsessed with prime numbers. So, she has 17 plants in her bedroom, 5 in the hallway in hand knitted plant pots, 23 in the front room and 19 in the basement. She gives them away to people when she goes to them for supper. And she has found that their common name is “Wandering Jew” which feels entirely appropriate. Carly is Jewish and has moved around quite a bit in London. Since she was an adult, she only lives in places beginning with an H. Hackney as a student, Hampstead, and Highgate as a nice Jewish wife and now in Highbury as a still nice divorcee. Shame the letter H is the eighth letter in the alphabet as it doesn’t fit with the prime number theme! Her ex-husband grows spider plants, but Carly clearly prefers her plant as purple is her favourite colour. And spider plants really are rather spindly. Maybe, Carly is just being mean for the sake of it!
Finally, Carly is able to combine plants with her knitting hobby. She has often used time honoured plant-based yarns such as linen and cotton but more recently bamboo. This feels really luxurious, but she does worry about the amount of chemicals needed to turn it from hard sticks into a soft yarn. Similarly, she feels the same with eucalyptus. She has crocheted with this. She wonders what yarns will be discovered next from the plant kingdom. Maybe something from mint roots, she smiles gleefully to herself?
