"How did I get here?": Nursery Edition

A cactus we got this weekend

Despite the title of this blog post, it has nothing to do with explaining the birds and the bees to kids or really anything infant-related. Instead its about nurseries of the plant variety and how I've come to find myself willingly going to them in the middle of the Saturday afternoon sun.

The answer is simple: Chef asked me to. The reason is more complicated. Kind of.

Until we moved to LA, we were lacking a few things: 1) a patio or any outdoor space that was at least semi-private 2) beautiful weather, year-round. Those two things are crucial to being able to grow much of anything on your own. At least I've been told. I can kill anything green just by looking at it. I think it senses my apprehension to plant items since I spent much of my twenties avoiding eating them.

When we have a little patio and some steady sun, Chef decided he'd like to utilize them to grow things. He'd been asking for houseplants for a while, but I was skeptical. Mostly because of my aforementioned brown thumb and us having kitties that can easily use their extra toes to scoop dirt out of a plant and on to the floor. I was being practical, really. But then we saw an episode of "My cat From Hell" where they planted some indoor cat grass for the cats to have "salad." I thought it was a good idea and Chef jumped on it, so we headed to Lowe's to get some supplies. And then we headed back for more supplies when the cats loved the cat grass. It was on this second trip that Chef decided that growing some succulents would be fun and got some.

Here's one of the many reasons I love Chef: he has passion. When he has passion for something, he leaves no stone unturned for finding the best way to do something. I firmly believe that passion is a big draw for most women. We see a man has passion for something and know that if he has passion for something, he can have passion for us, too. Which is why I believe that so many women go for sports fans and then get pissy when the guy still likes sports after they're together. Passion isn't transferable. You don't lose passion for something because you gain passion for something else. But I digress.

Chef's succulents then grew to include herbs. hydrangeas (which I picked out for me but he keeps thriving), orchids (which I picked out for me because I heard they were hearty and needed little attention), various other trimmings from his other plants and two small dwarf fruit trees.

Chef's passion not equals time in the sun around plants for me, but also a crop of lemons and limes some time in the future. Not too shabby. Too bad my writing passion doesn't provide anything for him. . .yet.