Good Bye, Dear Plant

i’ve never been a green thumb kind of guy, but this summer, i spent a lot of time in the yard trying to make it look nice. i trimmed many bushes, pulled multiple years worth of weeds from the flower gardens, dug things up and did some planting. for some reason, this year i felt the urge to make the yard look nicer. when i was growing up, my parents always spent a great deal of time planting and beautifying our yard. i never really felt that desire until this year. when i was done, i thought it helped make the neighborhood look a little better. our part of the city has it’s share of unoccupied houses that are boarded up, with overgrown lawns. before this year, our house wasn’t far behind.

i planted ferns in the flower beds next to both the front and back porches. we also bought a couple of potted plants that we set next to the stairs on each porch. i actually spent some time taking care of these plants. i often watered them and was amazed that they stayed alive throughout the summer. seeing how i have no green thumb, i was filled with a little pride watching these plants grow. until last night.

we spent the evening playing games as a family and just as we were getting ready to go upstairs to bed, i glanced out the front door window and noticed one of the plants was gone. i thought that maybe the wind caught it and it fell down the stairs, so i went outside to look for it. it was nowhere to be found. someone stole our plant!

since living in the inner-city, we’ve had our cars broken into several times, well, they just opened the doors on the nights we forgot to lock them…our fault. someone once broke into the house when we were at church and stole our playstation2 and several games. that one hurt our son quite a bit. but this one bothers me most of all. the plant was helping the block look a little better, not just our house. the one time in my life i spent a little effort trying to make the yard look nice, someone comes along and walks off with a plant. i guess it just goes with the territory. since our house was broken into, we have been leaving the lights on in both the front and back porches, hoping to deter someone from trying to get in. the only problem with that is, with the light on, if you are going down the street, you can see everything on the porch.

maybe someone going down the street needed a nice birthday present for their mother and saw the plant as an easy way to get it. i just hope they enjoy it and love it and water it… if you get a nice green plant in a plastic terra cota pot, say goodbye for me.