My houseplants hate me.
They don’t survive because of me.
They survive in spite of me.
Only the hearty and independent are going to make it so I learned long ago never to invest in anything finicky. (Ferns and I are not even on speaking terms.)
The houseplant menagerie has dwindled - from every beautiful and/or exotic plant you can imagine someone giving you as a gift - to nothing but succulents.
Echiveria and its cousins are just about the only thing that can withstand my watering schedule.
Which might best be described as semi-monthly.
Or bi-monthly.
I get those two confused.
Sadly, they are both accurate.
Let’s just say that sometimes I grab the watering can on a whim and other times only when I see things shriveling up. (Perhaps by that point they are letting out little whimpers and screams on a frequency that somehow penetrates my consciousness.)
This state of affairs is nothing new.
I take you back to my elementary school in June.
We are all being handed plants to take home for the summer.
“How lovely!” you might be thinking. Perhaps you are laboring under the delusion that these plants are being gifted to us to be enjoyed during our school vacation.
You would be wrong.
These plants are yet another way for the school environment to contribute to peer pressure, competitiveness, and self-esteem issues.
It’s not enough for the educational powers that be to make us feel bad about ourselves through how academically gifted we may or may not be. Or how athletic.
No, now we can also feel inept at horticulture.
Because these plants are supposed to return with us in the fall.
When they will be judged and prizes will be given.
They are actually a sort of summer homework.
Unfortunately for the plants, your average eight year old is not known for taking time out of their busy “run around the neighborhood like a wild thing for twelve weeks” schedule to tend to them. Unlike the classroom gerbil, the houseplants don’t do anything interesting except, perhaps, get taller.
So this homework falls to the parents.
Specifically, the moms.
(Because, at this point in history, there are still a lot of moms at home dealing with their crazy children for the summer.)
And not just at my school. The fate of hundreds of plants is now in the hands of mothers all over town.
Which is why, when we jump forward to September, we see me returning with a pile of potted dirt where a plant used to be, and my husband proudly handing in a masterpiece that will earn a blue ribbon.
Because his mother has babied that plant as if it was a grandchild.
And my mother was BUSY.
Of course, it is wrong of me to lay all the blame on my mom.
After all, the plant was supposed to be MY responsibility.
But now we get to the crux of the matter.
I hated that plant.
Hated it with a passion.
Because if we return to that day in June the scene is this:
As we all troop into the auditorium – on that final day of school – the stage is covered with greenery.
Dotted here and there are beautiful delicate umbrella plants.
I want one.
I never get one.
Every year these little gems are handed to the popular kids.
And every year I am handed something that looks like lettuce that has either gone bad or can’t make up its mind what color to be.
Every year I am handed…
a coleus.
A pathetic little ordinary looking green coleus.
And, because of my umbrella plant infatuation, that coleus is doomed.
Because I am going to take it home, set it on a windowsill, and deliberately leave its fate in the hands of my mother.
A woman who is not only BUSY, but is probably the source of my “can never remember to water a houseplant” DNA.
DNA that will firmly dictate the fate of all future houseplants that have the misfortune to cross my path.
So, yes, I’m pretty sure my houseplants hate me.
They’re entitled.
Copyright© 2026 Anne Morse Hambrock All rights reserved.
Joy Shot
Images that make me feel better.
This weekend, I went on a garden walk, touring five local properties belonging to members of the garden club.
And had a moment.
A coleus conversion.
The featured gardens were filled with the most amazingly beautiful varieties of coleus.
And I drove to my favorite local plant emporium and bought a whole bunch.
Perhaps we will make up after all these years…
Weekly Dose - Mad As Hell
I’ve moved the weekly dose up from the bottom this week because it is generated directly from the previous story.
I had an emotionally complicated day on Saturday for reasons I won’t get into. They don’t matter anyway - on the journey home from the plant place – with a coleus packed car – THIS came on the radio:
And that riff, that amazing, hard driving guitar riff brought a ton of stuff to the surface. The power of it - the drive - the rawness of it.
I almost can’t describe to you what happened to me in that moment.
The riff was pulling up my anger.
Not just anger.
Rage.
Rage I’ve been suppressing.
Months of rage at the forces trying to drag me, and all American women, back to a bygone era.
It’s not just about the right to vote.
It’s about the right for me, as a married woman, to have a bank account and credit cards in my own name.
About our rights to make our own medical decisions.
About our rights to choose who we marry.
And a host of other issues.
Think about it.
Think about all the rights you take for granted every day that were NOT there for your great grandmother.
Or even possibly your grandmother.
I admit that I have been typical of my generation. Coasting on the victories won for me by legions of women fighting for, even giving their lives for, equality. Blind to everyday inequities I might not be experiencing personally.
Expecting my rights to just “be there” as part of the fabric of the future.
Yes, well.
Maybe not something I can continue to count on.
A source of particular outrage is the current push for the SAVE act.
If you have not been paying attention – if you have no clue how this proposed legislation will affect the voting rights of women – you need to catch up.
Lest you think this is all overblown, I share with you my own difficulties in getting a “real ID”.
I arrived at the DMV armed with the following:
Birth Certificate
Driver’s License
Social Security Card
To be fair, I did not go to the website of the DMV to check what documents I would need. I assumed that these three government issued forms of ID would be sufficient, as they had been in the past for things like a passport.
I was wrong.
Even though my SS card and driver’s license showed proof that my name had been legally changed from that on my birth certificate – changed on accepted government IDs – I was informed that I needed to bring in my marriage license.
Now I don’t know if you keep your marriage license close to hand, but mine is lord knows where. Probably in a bin in the attic.
Have you ever seen the end of “Raiders Of The Lost Ark”? That moment where the camera pulls out to show the seven million identical looking crates in the warehouse?
That’s my attic.
So the marriage license thing was not happening.
It turns out that, because I have a valid US passport, I’m one of the lucky ones. A passport trumps all the other IDs and CAN be used to prove identity in case of both voting and the obtaining of a “real ID”.
But for all the women whose current names do not match their birth certificates, who don’t have passports, and have no idea where their marriage licenses are lurking, the November elections have the potential to be a complete shitshow if this thing passes.
And if millions of us can no longer vote – I guarantee you the other dominoes will start falling even faster than they have over the past ten years. That bit about no longer being allowed to have your own independent bank account might not be so far-fetched.
While Ann Telnaes is not the only woman in editorial cartooning, she is the voice I turn to most often for cartoons that capture the heart of what is at stake for women.
So today’s weekly dose is a spotlight on some of my Ann T. favorites:
Subscribe to Ann’s Substack here.
Addendum
*It turns out I was getting the right signals from that song – Nancy Wilson has been quoted as calling “Barracuda” “A sophisticated song of rage.”
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