“No. That’s not true. That’s impossible,” I thought.

But he pulled a brown, shriveled thing in a ceramic pot out of the wastebasket to prove it.

What...I don’t...how???

He cute and all.

But I’ve discovered I’ve inherited my mother’s brown thumb. I’ve had this poor bastard for two days and he already looks like this.

Well...I thought it was one.

Turns out there were three mini roses in that pot.

In that 2 inch pot.

I get it’s for “asthetic,” and that the cute, tiny pot probably boosts sales, but stuff like this is why so many people think they have a “brown thumb.” 

Put three rose bushes -- even miniature ones -- into a pot that small, and their roots will start to strangle each other before they even leave the store. If the roots have nowhere to go, it doesn’t matter if they’re in an “easy water” pot. You can water and fertilize and full-sun-for-at-least-6-hours-a-day these roses as much as you want, but if you don’t know to repot them from that 2-inch sardine can they were sold to you in, then they’ll probably die before the summer’s over anyway.

Which is probably good business for the company selling them like that in the first place. Some people will want to try again next year. And still won’t repot.

So long rant short, I’d already been planning to repot my new rose before I went to bed, but my little discovery made me scrounge through my recycling at 3 a.m. to find empty milk jugs and plastic cups big enough to be upcycled into two extra rose planters. As one does. 

I succeeded, and am now the tired owner of three hopefully-not-going-to-die-of-root-compaction miniature yellow roses.

I used to be the person people came to with their dying plants to rehabilitate them, since I moved I can't seem to grow anything, I even killed a spider plant!