The Truth Behind the Spider Plant

No wonder I'm having motivation problems at the moment. Look at my writing room. It's a mess! It has, I am ashamed to say, become a dumping ground. It has become an easy place to erect (no sniggering at the back, please) a clothes airer on which to dry our clothes now we have dispensed with the electricity guzzling tumble dryer. When someone calls to say 'I'm popping round in half an hour', it is a good place to fling the papers/magazines/books/ ironing/ sewing projects that I grab from surfaces in a whizz-bang attempt at cleaning up so I don't appear such a sloven. It is one of the down sides of working from home. I think people expect me to have a tidy house because I am on hand to tidy. 'What else could she possibly occupy her time with?' I reckon they are thinking. 'She's isn't doing a proper job, after all.'

Ergo, when I go to my writing room to write, to do my work, I can't get near my writing desk for the clutter. And I settle with my laptop in the kitchen which is full of distractions like cups of tea and biscuits and gazing out of the windows at chickens. And giving the fridge a clear out and maybe making a cake or two...

Following a thoroughly moochy Saturday evening, when my attempt to watch 'The Man Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain' was scuppered once more by the pleasant and unexpected arrival of a bleached-headed Chris on roller-blades (don't ask), I told myself very firmly to pull myself together. 'Tomorrow,' I said, as I lay in bed ready for sleep, with Tybalt flopped on my stomach, 'you are going to TIDY UP that room, and you are going to GET YOURSELF BACK ON TRACK and stop all this MOOCHY behaviour.'
'Excuse me,' said Tybalt, 'but could you shut up now? I am trying to sleep and your talking is making your tummy wobble up and down. It's like sleeping on an ocean liner.'

Up early this morning I march into the writing room armed with window cleaner, wax polish, hoover and various cloths and dusters. I roll up my sleeves. 'Right,' I say. 'No tea and hot cross bun until you've de-cluttered this room.'

There are two windows in my writing room. It is what is known in estate agent parlance as 'double aspect'. Both window ledges contain plants. All the plants are pot-bound and looking decidedly ill. I cart all the plants to the greenhouse in order to repot them and give them a new surge of life.

Now, I tend to prefer houseplants that are foliage based rather than ones with flowers. This is because things with flowers tend to die on me. So I gather around me a mixture of ferns, peace lilies and spider plants. One of them even has a name. It is a large fern called Terwilliger, because it looks like Side-Show Bob from The Simpsons. So I repot the plants and it is when I get to the spiderplant that I have a startling moment.

Why are spider plants called spider plants, do you think? Because their arch-like green leaves make them look like spiders? I think not. I've always thought this plant was mis-named. I'd call it something like a fountain plant or a weeping willow plant. Far more in keeping with the effect its foliage creates.

I'll tell you why they're called spider plants. It's because of their roots! They have big, thick, bulbously fat hairy roots that tangle themselves together like big, thick, bulbously fat hairy spider legs! They are HORRIBLE! My camera has run out of batteries otherwise I would have a put a photo in this post so you could judge for yourselves. This particular plant had divided itself into three. I had the devil's own job separating them because of these horrible, horrible roots. There was no 'gentle teasing apart' involved, as is the suggested method in all the gardening books when it comes to the repotting of house plants. More like vicious and violent wrenching. It was like wrestling with a giant squid.

Well, I stuffed the now three spider plants into new pots with new compost and gave them some water. I don't know if they'll survive this brutal treatment. But now I know what lies beneath the surface, I'm not sure I'm that bothered.

Back to my writing room. After two hours of cleaning and tidying, filing and ordering, it now looks like a proper work space. It feels calm and ordered. It feels like a proper place to write. It feels like a good place to have a cuppa and a hot cross bun and do a bit of reading.

And maybe some writing.