I’ve been on a Dexter Netflixbender lately. Dexter Morgan is a serial killer with a code, a created conscience in his psychopath’s brain that helps him pick his targets- usually always someone who had murdered, slipped through the cracks of the legal system and will murder again. Kind of a sick twist on Robin Hood- steal the life from the bad, so the good survive. He calls the part of himself that has the need to kill his, “Dark Passenger.”

I have a Green Passenger.

Unlike Dexter’s she is about life, not death.

She sleeps most of the winter, content to keep alive the herb garden of planters that I bring inside before the first frost. Water, pinch back, fertilize, repeat. All winter. Sometimes she tends to the plants overwintered in the garage and saves eggshells in a container under the sink for fertilizer, but mostly she’s quiet…dormant.

Then it turns warm. The grass begins to green, buds and tiny shoots of dormant plants appear and she comes out of her slumber.

She wants to get her hands dirty.

She needs to get her hands dirty.

But other than clearing out flower beds and starting seedlings, there isn’t much she can do.

So I’m trying to appease her, trying to quiet her roar.

Yesterday she drove me to the nursery. There wasn’t a lot out to look at, but I found some succulents for a bowl I’m planning for the porch.

I caught myself caressing these babies like they were a…err…nevermind. I like plants. But not in some weird fetish kinda way.

I swear.

My Green Passenger also had thrown a few small houseplants into my grocery store shopping cart a few weeks back. They have been in their original containers, but displayed in a pretty bowl on my dining room table. My Green Passenger didn’t want to empty the dishwasher and change light bulbs this morning, she wanted to transplant them.

So we did.

But even that wasn’t enough. She wanted to do more. The succulents aren’t ready to be transplanted yet, but we could get the containers ready, right?

Pretty pots that I want are usually beyond my budget, so I try to think outside the pot. I’ve been using baskets for years- line them with Press and Seal Wrap, poke a couple holes in the bottom and fill with potting soil. A few years ago I found how easy it was to poke holes in metal containers: nail+hammer=hole. Combined with painting clay or plastic pots (there is spray paint for plastics) , I’ve been content with the found planters I’ve created.

This year I added a new material and have been on a melamine bowl bender. (It seems I may have a bender driven personality?) They make colorful, unique planters and are cheap enough that swapping them out when I get tired of the current color scheme doesn’t hurt one bit.

And it’s super easy.

 

Add to the stack of other planters ready to be filled and decorate my porch as soon as it gets warm enough.

My Green Passenger is eyeing all the bare roots and summer bulbs that she managed to squirrel away as winter went on and on and on. I don’t really know if I can hold her back.

I don’t know if I want to.