When I was a young woman, I killed a lot of houseplants until my mother stopped giving them to me. My mom is the plant queen, and she tried to pass the torch to me. My growing up years were spent in a plant-filled home in the 1970s. Plants hanging from macramé holders on the ceiling. Plants in handmade ceramic pots. They were everywhere, with their creepy vines creeping in when you least suspected it, wrapping around your shoulders (spider plant, I’m looking at you).
When I went to college in the late '80s, my mother gifted me some houseplants to brighten up my new dorm. But every single plant she gave me died. Yes, even a popular houseplant, the nearly impossible to kill houseplant. It doesn’t need much light; you don’t have to water it too much. Hell, you could overwater it, and it still wouldn’t die. Well, I managed to kill it. Of course, it took a while. But within a few months, the leaves turned brown, wilted, and/or shriveled.