by Lynn Edwards

Created on: August 19, 2008   Last Updated: May 01, 2012

Justifiable Ivy

It was in fourth grade that I was proven to be a plant killer. I know that because that was the only year in elementary school the our classroom windows faced west. I remember this so well because I spent many weeks approaching those windowsills and looking, first with hope, then dread and finally bitterness. Our class had cut off the tops of a our blue and white milk cartons, filled the lower half with the provided soil and planted the seed we had been given so we could watch, step by step, how plants grew. All of our containers had our names emblazoned across them in thick black permanent marker, so everyone in the class knew whose were whose. While some kids' plants sprouted, mine remained a blank black square of dirt and remained that way after many of the new plants became so tall that they began to bend under their own weight.

Watering my half carton religiously, with hope or prayer, never produced anything but mud. When the lesson was declared over, all the other kids got to bring plants home as gifts for their parents. I had to trudge home with failure. It was not something I experienced often in school, and I hated it. My first horticultural lesson provided definitive evidence that I had been cursed with a black thumb, unable to cultivate something even the worst kid in class could.

At first, I was ashamed of my failure. Later, I took a perverse pride in not being able to make things grow, when discovered I wasn't the only one so blighted. There were plenty of people I liked, and some I even admired, who couldn't keep a plant alive either.

I hadn't been married very long when I was enticed into allowing a plant in my life. We were at a hardware store, one of many my husband frequented with me in tow. He was involved in examining whatever it was that held no interest for me, while I wandered aimlessly until I reached the garden section. There I saw a cup of English Ivy whose lushness and color called to me. It was cheap, too. Impulsively, I purchased it, though I did have a twinge of guilt about taking such a pretty little thing home to its death. Yet, that stubborn bit of green refused to conform to my pessimistic expectations. Sitting on our kitchen windowsill, its tiny tendrils and leaves responded to my regular watering by growing, not shriveling or turning yellow or black, but getting taller, wider and longer. It expanded so much that even to my untrained eye, it appeared to have outgrown its cramped quarters. There was no way such

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