up until recently I was convinced I was a terrible gardener. You know when you just have a preconceived notion about yourself, created from some long ago incident that has always stuck with you and you’ve never bothered to see if it really is in fact true.  Well this is what happened to me with gardening.  I killed a few plants and I was sure it was my horrid gardening skills, my thumb was an indelible shade of black, and that I was never going to be able to keep something alive.  I mean I was a nanny in my past, so I am trusted with children, just not a house plants.  But then succulents came into my life.

We got a shipment of these lovely little desert plants around Christmas time last year and I immediately fell in love with them.  We potted them in adorable little containers and adorned then with little touches for the holiday season. They are perfect for potting in any kind of lovely dish or container you so desire. I was coveting a particularly cute one but was just SURE I would kill the poor thing.  Amy, who is always encouraging us to just go for it, convinced me to take one home and see what might happen.  The beauty of the succulent plant is that they are desert plants so they requite very little water.  This was a big plus for me, my main problem was that I could never be bothered to remember to water my plants, which is probably why they inevitably kicked the bucket.  But these little guys are so cute you can’t help but want to care for them, they are like the puppies of the plant world.

So I took my little echeveria plant home and hoped for the best.  And guess what??  I still have it!  He grew a little tall so I have cut it down, put it in water and am re-rooting it.  That’s right I said re-rooting, pretty impressive gardening stuff right?  So it turns out I am not a horrible gardener, my confidence was just lacking, and it took these precious little plants to restore it. I have expanded my collection and have a delightful antique dish of them.

I am now even growing a window sill full of herbs, and they are thriving.  It’s so nice to have fresh basil to throw into my cooking!  I just mosey over to my window and snip a few leaves anytime I need them, what a concept!

So if you think you are a horrid gardener like I did, maybe you just need to pick up a  succulent and give it another shot! And if you think you are horrible at anything else in life maybe you need to give that another shot too!