The secret to having a green thumb is persistence. Yes, you'll kill plants, but if you keep studying, and trying, eventually you'll have something live. Oddly enough, what kills most houseplants? Overwatering.
This is not to say I have a green thumb. I have not. In fact, this summer trying to garden in Texas was a humbling experience, and that I had any plants at all survive is a testament to the persistence of life. That's the persistence I meant above. The poor gardener just keeps trying until they finally find a plant or plants that will keep growing in spite of it all. One thing I've learned for sure - I cannot container garden here. I just can't keep enough water on the plants to help them survive, when we have three months straight of over 100 degree days, and the containers are on the edge of the big concrete pad for parking. Those poor little plants were doing their best to survive in God's own EZ Bake oven.
What did work, and I'll be doing more of next year, were really big containers. I bought these non-woven bags, in 100 and 150 gallon sizes, and we set one up. My son did it without me, putting some branches down in the bottom, then a layer of straw, before finally putting in a soil mixed from peat moss bales and purchased topsoil. He didn't do it the way I would have, but he got it done, which is more than I would have, given how busy I was at that time. I planted in herbs and a zucchini with handfuls of bone meal. Watering was done sporadically if at all for the next month or two (we started them in August) and... they are surviving and thriving! Noted, and next year I don't think I'll try small containers (3 gallon sized) at all. It may take me a few growing seasons to dial this in, but I'm persistent, too.
My end of summer report on the garden is dismal. Not only did I get two tiny tomatoes and a handful of peppers as the sum total of our harvest, but I almost killed the one plant heirloom I have. My great-great-grandmother Clara's Thanksgiving Cactus did not take well at all to being outside in the Texas heat and sun. It shed almost all of it's leaves and I thought it was dead. Desperate, I brought it into the laundry room and hung it in front of sheltered windows (they open onto the neighbor's garage and a row of trees less than six feet away) and watered it extensively, then weekly. I can't tell you how relieved I was to see the shiny nubs of new growth a few weeks later. To the best of my knowledge, I'm the last in the family with starts from any of the holiday cacti that once filled the conservatory on the front of my Great-Grandma Ella's house.
African violet, rescued in fine fettle from the discard shelf because it was done blooming, and my little Cattleya orchid.
With the dining room and living room set up, and me realizing that I'm better at caring for plants I can easily reach during the day, I've decided that I may as well move aspects of the garden indoors. I'll still kill plants. For one thing, being frugal (look, houseplants got very popular during the pandemic, which drove up prices, add in inflation and the cost of shipping and the state of the market is currently ridiculous) I'm shopping the clearance racks for plants. Which often means half-dead. As long as they are only mostly dead, I have a chance, right?
A lovely Golden Pothos, my son's 'tree' of grass, and a maidenhair fern I am hopeful I can maintain. It's badly sunburned from it's sojourn on the discard shelf in Texas sun. Poor little thing.
We shall see. Gardening, like writing and cooking, is one of those things I can't not do. I am in particular fascinated with bonsai (never yet kept one alive) and orchids (I have a handful, managed to kill a couple during the move to TX by freezing them in the moving truck, poor defenseless lambs). I won't turn the house into a jungle, but I absolutely will put herbs in the kitchen window, orchids in the office, and ponder how to keep plants in the bedroom windows while still maintaining privacy.
Winter is coming. I am prepping by bringing the green in with me. I've planted an amaryllis bulb, and have pre-chilled paperwhite bulbs ready to go. I shall have flowers! and I will kill plants. Look, you know that black dyes are just really, really dark green, right?
In the window over my baking nook, another sunburned maidenhair fern. I have magical memories of seeing these in the wild in Oregon as a girl and have always wanted to grow them.