Still Life (or being sick of growing things)

I'm sick of growing things, especially if they are green. Plants are beautiful and all that, and the thought of having life growing merrily under your fingers in the form of newly sprouted green leaves is over-rated. Newly sprouting green leaves come with a very sort of different growing thing - Sap-drinking, parasitic, small, white, ubiquitous ants.

Insects freak me out. They just do. I'm sure that they have their right to live in some part of the universe, but just as long as it's not mine. Not in my house, not on my windowsill, not anywhere near white, clean and spick-and-span, thank you very much!

I just threw out a whole thriving colony of these things + 3 plants along with them today. As of now, though they do brighten the house, I really don't think I can deal with living things that aren't furry and don't move. Somehow, the idea of carbon based life forms that don't eat, breathe and walk like I do just freak me out. I don't know how to make them reproduce (at least not in the same way that I do), I don't know how to feed them (when they don't appear to be visibly "eating" anything), I don't know how to water them or keep them alive. Their anatomy elude me.

I usually pride myself in being quite good at keeping things alive and healthy as long as I know their anatomies. I know how dogs and cats and mice, rabbits and hamsters look like. I know how they work. And yet, these most simple of life forms, these things called plants, who apparently operate on a very simple basis - water through roots through stems to leaves, reproduction through seeds or grafts - just can't seem to stay alive. They are like ornamental, there but not there life forms, slowly dying day by day as leaves shrivel, get infected by parasitic ants, apparently not capable of feeling pain or responding to sound or fury. They are still life, but life still. I just can't get my head around these things.

So, although feeling slightly bad that they might still be alive (I cannot recognize the point of no return for a plant that appears to be there, absorb water, apparently alive but without new leaves, sprouts or anything), I threw out the lavender, japonica and pansies.

The only thing that appears resolutely blooming and doing well is my now-beloved jewel orchid, which is doing very well, growing long, lean and tall, with lovely tiny white blooms. Curiously enough, this was the only plant I didn't want in the beginning. Murphy's law, isn't it?