Brown Fingers :: 12:24 AM :: easyjetsetter

I'm a killer. My body count currently stands at three. I've killed Mitch, Lucky, and Vernon. I left Mitch in the dubious care of an equally dubious boyfriend while I lived in California for the summer, left Lucky on the doorstep in an ice storm and Vernon, who I met when I was living in Washington, had bits of him fell off whenever I touched him.

Of course, these are all plants. I thought naming them would make me more caring and solicitous and increase their chances of survival. I was wrong. They all died.

I read somewhere that you know you're ready for a pet when you can keep a plant alive, and you know you're ready for children if you can keep the pet alive. I know that children and dogs have ways of making their needs known that plants don't, but I think it's important that I learn to keep vegetation healthy before I consider motherhood.

So, I imagine that those who know me, especially my mother and my wife, who are SCARILY similar in their ability to fill an entire hour debating exactly what variety of laburnum that bushy green thing is, will be choking with irrepressible laughter on their morning coffee when they read that I did some planting today.

Since I decided to stay on, I have become possessed with a hankering to make the flat prettier. My flat has the dimensions and charm of a train compartment, plus a bathroom that is half the flat again. Surface and storage space are at a premium, due to my worryingly large collection of pointy black shoes, almost identical to the untrained eye, but, in ways discernible only to me, very different. I also am currently housing 1000 brochures in eight 17kg boxes. They were fun to bring up five flights.

So, when there's no space inside, what do you do? Start putting stuff outside, that's what. I have been eyeing my neighbours' window boxes with some envy. I therefore decided that my springtime home improvement will be a pair of nice, black wrought iron dangly planters to hang off my nice, wrought iron barriers that span my nice draughty French windows at hip-height. They are presumably are there to stop me from falling out. Which they would, if I were an ewok.

It was quite a project: I got two baskets, four terracotta pots and some potting soil from a wee bazaar down the street, for 18 euros, and then, convinced that there was a monceau fleurs (cheap flower shop) in my neighborhood, walked down the boulevard de magenta almost until bonne nouvelle metro.

I had an exciting vocabulary expansion session by trying names of various flowers with a frenchified pronunciation (good trick when in doubt) and felt a bit silly when they told me that cyclamen are apparently over for the season, as they bloom in December.

I was not, under any circumstances, buying bloody geraniums, as they are raggedy and ugly and so ubiquitous and therefore unchic. Nor was I buying hydrangeas, which are so pretty, especially pure white ones, but about 8 euros per plant. So when I spotted some neat little clusters of pink flowers in tiny wee pots and discovered that these were 2 euros I didn't think to ask what they actually were. While I was paying it transpired that they were begonias.

The reason I even know how to repot plants is because on the rare occasions when Dad and I decide there are no good films on TV and Mum is ceded control of the remote (called a bleepy in our household) we invariably watch something garden or home improvement related.

I was aware that you have to separate the roots out a bit, and that you should not bury the stems, and that lots of water is required to make the new soil and the old soil coagulate. I made a nice mess on my floor, but my window boxes are now done and are frightfully pretty.

Of course, this being France, there were no instructions attached the plants, but this is why we have the intarweb. It turns out that begonias are into indirect sunlight and can't be doing with temperatures under 55 degrees, so the fact that it is currently 6 degress out at night and that my flat gets sun streaming in from 2 to 6 pm, I think I have condemned these poor begonias to death.

Of course, having four means I've spread my bets a little. However, now I feel like a Victorian parent, having eight babies to try and beat the odds and have at least one child survive a high infant mortality death rate. I am not naming them, lest I get too attached. Guess I'm not ready for babies yet. Dammit.

P.S. Thanks to the inability of wee shops to cater to wee gardening projects I have about 3 litres of soil left. If anyone is in the Paris area and has a similar wee project in mind, please email me at easyjetsetter@hotmail.com and we'll set up a meeting so I can pass it on.