The Christmas Ficus

I am not a plant person. To me, tending plants is like working in a nursing home. Your charges take a great deal of care and special attention, but will never get to the point where they can get along without you. And then they die.

One year for my birthday, a well-meaning relative gave me three very large house plants. I put the plants out on the sun porch where they took up all the space, and we had our first emergency immediately. One of my cats chewed up some of the leaves. She spent the evening throwing up. We went to the internet, researched plants that made cats sick, and sure enough, we had a cat-killing plant. It went outside. It was followed by the other two the next day.
 

I assumed they would whither and die over the summer, and that would be the end of it, but God watered them and they flourished.

Since my husband’s family had given us the plants, he took responsibility for keeping them alive, despite my ambivalence. He repotted the ficus and it grew twice as high over the summer. He bought more pots and potting soil for the other two, but lost interest in the project. So now I had thriving plants in the yard, and a sun porch cluttered with unused pots and potting soil.

I felt resentment toward pots and plants.

At the end of the summer, the plant-gifter came over to visit and we lied about how much we were enjoying the plants and how well they were doing outside. But, I confessed, with winter coming, they’d have to move back inside and one was a cat-killing plant. The plant-gifter volunteered to take that one home and return it in the spring. I prayed she would offer the same deal for the others, but she left with just the cat-killer. I prayed she would forget to return it in the spring, and that prayer was answered. I never asked about it.

Then my husband’s grandfather died, and his office sent over a plant to console us. We were back to three large plants again, the ficus, some leafy thing, and the dead grandfather plant.

The weather turned cold and the plants began to look endangered. Time to take them to the dump! Right?

No, my husband brought them all inside. His family had given us two of them, and the other was his comfort plant for losing a grandfather, he said. So they all sat on the dining room table, the only available space near a window, leaving no room for anything else, and still not getting enough sun since the dining room faced north. In the evening, we turned on desk lights to shine on the plants. They all perked up.

Will this ever end?

A cricket rode in on one of the plants, and periodically it chirped, getting the cats all excited. One evening when we were out, the cats went on a Cricket Mission from God and attacked the plants. We came home to dirt all over the dining room. Despite the attack, the plants thrived.

To make some room on the dining room table, we moved the ficus to in front of the fireplace. We did not have a fire in the fireplace that winter because it would ignite the ficus. We did not have a Christmas tree that year because the only place to put one was taken by the ficus. So we hung some tinsel on the ficus and made do.