We Almost Killed Her

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Sometimes too much of a good thing is too much

We thought we were losing her. Her whole system looked exhausted, the color draining out of her day by day, like something inside had simply given up.

Everyone was trying to help. My husband checked on her constantly like she might not make it. Our friend Eduardo stood nearby breathing on her, chanting, trying to heal her. I kept telling her how sorry I was that we were so stupid.

So stupid. We thought we were making her happy. Spoiling her and giving her new experiences. Treating her like someone who wanted enrichment instead of stability. Little did we know we were forcing her to teach us about resilience and change.

We have a money tree that lives on our kitchen counter with a view of the front lawn. She watches over us and makes oxygen for us. She’s family, a contributing member to this household.

My husband waters her. It is his job and his alone. We respect that boundary. We keep a little spritzer bottle next to her in case one of us gets the urge to give her a drink, but we all know we’re not really qualified to intervene.

Eduardo breathes on her, slow and steady like he’s sharing life force. I talk to her when I pass by, brushing a leaf with my fingers and asking how she’s doing while I rearrange my rocks and Buddha around her base like she has opinions about the layout. Which, to be fair, she might.

Eduardo was over helping my husband fix the kitchen ceiling from a flood that I may or may not have caused. On their third Home Depot run of the day, they brought her home to bless the house. That was the intention. We had just moved in, and she would grow with us while we started our life together.

And she has. She has seen everything.

There have been times when we were sure we were losing her. Leaves yellowed and dropped faster than they grew. Her stems slumped like she had just decided the lighting situation in this house was not worth the effort anymore. We’d gather around her like worried relatives, shift her a little closer to the window, turn the pot, check the soil. Hovering nearby like concerned plant doctors with absolutely no credentials.

Once Eduardo brought home moss from the forest and tucked it around her base. It looked beautiful, like we were giving her a little piece of the woods. He had been doing this with all his plants at home and kept telling me how much they loved it.

I was all in. My husband thought it was a terrible idea. He was right. She started declining.

The moss held too much moisture and her roots couldn’t breathe. Something that felt nurturing was slowly overwhelming her. We had essentially smothered her with love, which feels like a very on-brand mistake for this house.

We removed it, changed the soil, and gave her space again.

She came back. Like she always does, despite us.

Last summer I made what I thought was a very nice decision on her behalf. I figured she might enjoy some outside time, some fresh air, sunshine, a little day in the yard with me. Because if I like something, obviously she will too.

So I left her out there all afternoon.

By evening her leaves were bleached pale and over the next few days most of them fell off. I stood there staring at her bare branches, feeling that very specific guilt you get when you were trying to do something nice and managed to ruin everything instead.

So I brought her back inside and put her in her usual spot. Weeks later tiny green shoots started appearing along her stems, new leaves soft and bright, unfolding like nothing had happened. She didn’t rush. She didn’t perform recovery.

She just grew again when she was ready. No resentment. Just quiet improvement, which makes her the most emotionally stable one in the house.

Now every once in a while little clusters of mushrooms pop up in her soil. They appear overnight like tiny umbrellas and then collapse back into the dirt just as quietly. We leave her fallen leaves in the pot too. They dry, curl up, and eventually become part of the soil again.

It’s a whole little ecosystem in there. Things growing. Things breaking down. Things feeding whatever comes next. She’s got a better internal system than most of us.

She’s growing. Not perfect. Not symmetrical. A little wild in places. She has been with us through loud seasons and quiet ones, through weeks that felt light and weeks that felt heavy, through ordinary days that turned out to matter more than we realized at the time. She has dropped leaves and grown them back more times than I can count.

And somewhere along the way I realized I wasn’t just learning how to care for a plant.

I was learning how living systems recover.

How too much of a good thing can overwhelm.
 How sudden exposure can shock.
 How familiar conditions can help something come back to itself.
 How nothing in a living system is truly wasted, not even what falls away.

She was brought here to bless the house.

At this point, we mostly just try not to kill her, and in her own quiet, leafy way, she’s doing a much better job of taking care of us than we are of her.