I managed to keep a planter from my father’s funeral through 28 years and 4 cats (Big Bad John, Minnie the Moocher, Annabelle Lee, and Miss Kitty), but within a month of bringing him home, Jasper had eaten everything but the philodendrons. They appear to have died of lonliness or shock at the horror of watching their planter mates being destroyed.
The only two plants I’ve been able to keep for 40+ years without their being eaten or otherwise destroyed by cats were a Christmas cactus and an umbrella plant.
And I have just discovered that, in North America, “careen” is used to mean “move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way.” (The rest of us would use “career” for that.) I just use “careen” for cleaning ships.
I am going to find out how much of a green thumb I have….. My wife Sabrina and daughter Amy bought some citrus saplings for me last X-Mas and I have just planted them after a trip to the nursery: 2 tangelo, 2 temple/Parson Brown orange and a couple of Valencia orange trees. My Dad had several Minneola Tangelo, Pineapple Orange and Ruby Red Grapefruit in his back yard here in the Terrace (Temple Terrace) about 3 miles from where I live. His citrus survived 20F freezes in the ’70s and 80s, 2 snow events and numerous other calamities. I simply hope to get some tangelos in a few years…. He passed away many years ago (1998) and my Mom followed him soon after. These trees are kind of a tribute to them and how much I still love them!
Okay. So, real talk: I have been reading this comic for ages, and this is the one that made me finally comment. I LOVE this page, and it also makes me want to rush out and buy plants.
In panel five, the new victim – um, I mean plant addition to the Big Pink House – looks so happy and innocent. So carefree. Too bad it won’t last long.
I like the look of greenery but between cats and overhanging porches real ones don’t survive. So I have fabric greenery which at least is left alone. I discovered a magic spray artificial plant cleaner at a craft store. Take the plants outside, spray on the cleaner and it somehow eats all the dust and then evaporates….really magic.
I’ve been saying forever, long before it became a thing, that if the earth was flat, cats would have knocked everything off of it by now. If it’s sitting, it will fly…poor plant.
I had a spinal fusion in seventh grade (age 12 for non-US Orbsters). My French teacher came to visit me in the hospital. (I was in ICU postoperatively … standard procedure … and so wasn’t supposed to have visitors, but they looked the other way for a teacher who had driven 60 miles out of her way to see one of her students.) She brought me a plant (among other things). When I returned to school, she asked how the plant was faring and I jokingly said, “Well, it’s not dead yet.” The plant actually made it all the way to college with me.
Ha! My entire life I have been plagued by the fear that I am weak to cyanide attacks because I have no idea what almonds are supposed to smell like. I eat them for the texture but can’t taste or smell a thing. Now I know that at some point I had to have learned about the almond smell thing but I can’t remember when. I have just ALWAYS had that fear.
Oh my! At my old house, I had my African Violet on the table by the front window. Not sure when it happened, but my cat knocked it behind the table. When I finally noticed, I put it on the dining room table up and away from her. Now it sits on the chest freezer in the kitchen.
RIP Kathleen Andrews of Andrews McMeel Publishing. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/business/media/kathleen-andrews-dead.html Thaanks, Kathy for all the comic strips we have enjoyed because of you.
I produce enough vegetables and berries in my garden to last a year but my houseplants all die sooner or later except for the aloe vera. One eventually has to face reality and give up on hopeless causes!
Reincarnating my Melisande! She HATED houseplants, at one point in our first house picked her way through s couple thousand bucks worth of objet d’art on the mantle to push the little philodendron onto the hearth, where it was dried, broken and shriveled when I got home.
There was not a hair on anything else. Plant had been a gift from a college dorm friend. Dammit.
A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets. As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her.
Without missing a beat, she said, “Sir, I need to see your ticket, not your stub.”
A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store but she couldn’t find one big enough for her family. She asked a stock boy, “Do these turkeys get any bigger?”
The police officer got out of his car as the kid he had stopped for speeding rolled down his window. “I’ve been waiting for you all day.” the officer said.
The kid replied, “Yeah, well I got here as fast as I could.”
When the cop finally stopped laughing, he sent the kid on his way without a ticket.
A truck driver was driving along on the freeway and noticed a sign that read: Low Bridge Ahead. Before he knew it, the bridge is right in front of him and his truck gets wedged under it. Cars are backed up for miles.
Finally, a police car arrives. The cop gets out of his car and walks to the truck driver, puts his hands on his hips and says, “Got stuck, huh?”
The truck driver says, “No: I was delivering this bridge and I ran out of gas.”
I recently learned from gardening videos that gravel at the bottom of a pot doesn’t actually help with draining. And that bottom watering (watering a saucer instead of the dirt on top) cuts way down on fungus gnats.
Le'letha Premium Member over 3 years ago
OK, this one made me laugh. I think the cats have been watching too many (if there is such a thing) mystery shows.
…I am also attempting to have plants this year. Outside plants for me; indoor plants at my library (maybe). We’ll see how this goes.
sugordon over 3 years ago
The last panel here made me laugh out loud.
fullmoondeb Premium Member over 3 years ago
SUNDAY FUNDAY TIME!
JanBic Premium Member over 3 years ago
CLUE and almond tea poison
Sue Ellen over 3 years ago
Lupin in the library with a candlestick! What could be more iconic, or do I mean ironic? Both seem to work in the context.
DorseyBelle over 3 years ago
Burt is right (“so bad at this”). The plants are Doomed!! They will be knocked off windowsills, eaten, and barfed up into shoes.
Brian Premium Member over 3 years ago
Wasn’t this a British Mystery Show?
deadheadzan over 3 years ago
Clue for the clueless….It was definitely Lupin in the library with the candlestick!
saobadao over 3 years ago
Okay, what was the woman drinking when she wrote this….I kinda want some
Colorado Expat over 3 years ago
Is the plant thinking “Oh, No – not again!”?
Jungle Empress over 3 years ago
Breaking Clue News!
Jungle Empress over 3 years ago
Breaking Cat Clues?
Sue Ellen over 3 years ago
I managed to keep a planter from my father’s funeral through 28 years and 4 cats (Big Bad John, Minnie the Moocher, Annabelle Lee, and Miss Kitty), but within a month of bringing him home, Jasper had eaten everything but the philodendrons. They appear to have died of lonliness or shock at the horror of watching their planter mates being destroyed.
The only two plants I’ve been able to keep for 40+ years without their being eaten or otherwise destroyed by cats were a Christmas cactus and an umbrella plant.
Robin Harwood over 3 years ago
Will The Woman never learn? The tragic demise of the plant is foreordained.
Robin Harwood over 3 years ago
And I have just discovered that, in North America, “careen” is used to mean “move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way.” (The rest of us would use “career” for that.) I just use “careen” for cleaning ships.
BCN is educational.
TampaFanatic1 over 3 years ago
I am going to find out how much of a green thumb I have….. My wife Sabrina and daughter Amy bought some citrus saplings for me last X-Mas and I have just planted them after a trip to the nursery: 2 tangelo, 2 temple/Parson Brown orange and a couple of Valencia orange trees. My Dad had several Minneola Tangelo, Pineapple Orange and Ruby Red Grapefruit in his back yard here in the Terrace (Temple Terrace) about 3 miles from where I live. His citrus survived 20F freezes in the ’70s and 80s, 2 snow events and numerous other calamities. I simply hope to get some tangelos in a few years…. He passed away many years ago (1998) and my Mom followed him soon after. These trees are kind of a tribute to them and how much I still love them!
WelshRat Premium Member over 3 years ago
Any flower is a plant for the enemy.
KenseidenXL over 3 years ago
You can have nice things, or you can have a cat.
Colorado Expat over 3 years ago
Only the Plant of Many Teeth has a chance of survival…
Olive O'Sudden over 3 years ago
Just one question: Which cat is brewing up bitter almond tea for the houseplants? Is Baba Mouse sharing her crone-kitty wisdom with the crew?♥
Lifeflame over 3 years ago
Are the BCN Reporters all saying the Woman in Clueless about plants?
Meowmix6 over 3 years ago
Okay. So, real talk: I have been reading this comic for ages, and this is the one that made me finally comment. I LOVE this page, and it also makes me want to rush out and buy plants.
Charliegirl Premium Member over 3 years ago
Puck: "How many plants have to die? Too funny.
cat19632001 over 3 years ago
In panel five, the new victim – um, I mean plant addition to the Big Pink House – looks so happy and innocent. So carefree. Too bad it won’t last long.
cat19632001 over 3 years ago
Plant. Plant! Don’t go on the windowsill. Get out. Get out now! The Cats are inside the house!
arolarson Premium Member over 3 years ago
I like the look of greenery but between cats and overhanging porches real ones don’t survive. So I have fabric greenery which at least is left alone. I discovered a magic spray artificial plant cleaner at a craft store. Take the plants outside, spray on the cleaner and it somehow eats all the dust and then evaporates….really magic.
Tigrisan Premium Member over 3 years ago
I’ve been saying forever, long before it became a thing, that if the earth was flat, cats would have knocked everything off of it by now. If it’s sitting, it will fly…poor plant.
Gent over 3 years ago
Planty! NOOOOOOOOO!
Gent over 3 years ago
The cats knows that the woman may curse them a little for destroying plant but after a while she cools down and tells the cats aloe you vera much.
Kitty Katz over 3 years ago
Traditional as performed by Simon and Garfunkel: Scarborough Fair
Do you think planting another plant’s fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary grow fine
Do you remember their fate from before?
Brave plants gone way before their time!
…….
Starting with rocks from which nothing grows,
Parsley, sage, rosemary grow fine
Then potting soil, and a plant doesn’t know
Very soon it will be its time!
…….
Everyone wonders why the plant had its fall
Parsley, sage, rosemary grow fine
We hear the Woman for Lupin to call!
Lupin looks so guiltless each time!
…….
Do you think planting another plant’s fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary grow fine
Do you remember their fate from before?
Brave plants gone way before their time!
Michael G. over 3 years ago
Mixed metaphors.
rs0204 Premium Member over 3 years ago
I’ve planted you.
I’ve watered & fed you.
Grow Dammit!
Zoomer&Yeti over 3 years ago
“Oh, the FERN-anity!”
Miri Tallstag over 3 years ago
Yeah, the only plant my mom has kept alive more than a year is this lil succulent in the kitchen window. This is why i keep her away from my aloe.
Santana over 3 years ago
Next time Woman’s found
with a notion unsound
There’s a lot to be learned
So look around
Just what’s in Pucky’s little rant that
thinks he’ll save that poor potted plant
Anyone knows a rant can’t
save the Woman’s green plant
But Puck’s got high hopes
He’s got high hopes
He’s got high cats can fly
in the sky hopes
So any time plants wanna grow
Lupin’s gonna say “no”
Just remember Puck’s rant – but
Oops, there goes another lovely green…
Oops, there goes another lovely green…
Oops, there goes another lovely green plant
Kerplop
(J. Van Heusen / S. Cahn – High Hopes)
SheMc over 3 years ago
I am very lucky, my lovely cat accepts that the plants were here first so they must belong!!!
gadenbaby (aka LadyKat) over 3 years ago
Yum Yum is surprisingly good about my plants, be they indoor or outdoor.
skipper1992 over 3 years ago
I had a spinal fusion in seventh grade (age 12 for non-US Orbsters). My French teacher came to visit me in the hospital. (I was in ICU postoperatively … standard procedure … and so wasn’t supposed to have visitors, but they looked the other way for a teacher who had driven 60 miles out of her way to see one of her students.) She brought me a plant (among other things). When I returned to school, she asked how the plant was faring and I jokingly said, “Well, it’s not dead yet.” The plant actually made it all the way to college with me.
Aladar30 Premium Member over 3 years ago
TRAGEDY!!! Sigh. I love take care of plants.
aardtacha over 3 years ago
So the Woman has a black thumb?
BettyAdams over 3 years ago
Ha! My entire life I have been plagued by the fear that I am weak to cyanide attacks because I have no idea what almonds are supposed to smell like. I eat them for the texture but can’t taste or smell a thing. Now I know that at some point I had to have learned about the almond smell thing but I can’t remember when. I have just ALWAYS had that fear.
BobDrobneck over 3 years ago
Brilliant mix of noire references! Especially Clue…
Granny Roberta over 3 years ago
I hope Georgia knows we love ALL her work, but OMG this was SO funny!
Wichita1.0 over 3 years ago
Basically me with orchids. I evidently hold their tiny heads underwater. Misting is clearly an arcane science with me.
cat19632001 over 3 years ago
I can almost hear the poor plant screaming in the last panel as it heads over the edge into a fatal dive.
cat19632001 over 3 years ago
In a way, I have to admire the Woman’s optimism. If only living plants didn’t have to die a horrible death because of her flights of fancy.
ChristineSmith over 3 years ago
Has someone been watching Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane? (great movie with a young Jodie Foster)
mistercatworks over 3 years ago
Not just almonds, bitter almonds , the kind that degrade brake lines.
LucyLuLu over 3 years ago
My Lucylu and Big Gray never both my plants. I feel lucky!
asrialfeeple over 3 years ago
I have come to accept that I am NOT a plant person. Every plant that enters my house is doomed.
NWdryad over 3 years ago
Lupin is the one who will send it off the cliff.
GSD Mom Premium Member over 3 years ago
Georgia posted this on her FB page:
Under the waxing gibbous moon! So,… Who’d like Burt to dig through the old archives and look for some of Baba’s reports from back in the day?
Natarose over 3 years ago
Oh my! At my old house, I had my African Violet on the table by the front window. Not sure when it happened, but my cat knocked it behind the table. When I finally noticed, I put it on the dining room table up and away from her. Now it sits on the chest freezer in the kitchen.
alien cat ghost over 3 years ago
what’s with the boy’s and plants? The plants didn’t do anything to them……. orrrr did they???
One Serious Cat over 3 years ago
The woman is such an optimist!
Daeder over 3 years ago
The demise of a plant is always a great who-dun-it in a house full of feline suspects!
C and O 2666 over 3 years ago
RIP Kathleen Andrews of Andrews McMeel Publishing. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/business/media/kathleen-andrews-dead.html Thaanks, Kathy for all the comic strips we have enjoyed because of you.
Mx Crazy Cat Person over 3 years ago
OMC, Pucky is very upset by the plants dying.
over 3 years ago
It didn’t stand a chance.
drfhoule over 3 years ago
I produce enough vegetables and berries in my garden to last a year but my houseplants all die sooner or later except for the aloe vera. One eventually has to face reality and give up on hopeless causes!
paulahmurray over 3 years ago
Reincarnating my Melisande! She HATED houseplants, at one point in our first house picked her way through s couple thousand bucks worth of objet d’art on the mantle to push the little philodendron onto the hearth, where it was dried, broken and shriveled when I got home.
There was not a hair on anything else. Plant had been a gift from a college dorm friend. Dammit.
kit over 3 years ago
t was mealtime during an airline flight.
The flight attendant asked John, “Sir, would you like dinner?”
“What are my choices?” John replied.
“Yes or no,” she said.
kit over 3 years ago
A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets. As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her.
Without missing a beat, she said, “Sir, I need to see your ticket, not your stub.”
kit over 3 years ago
A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store but she couldn’t find one big enough for her family. She asked a stock boy, “Do these turkeys get any bigger?”
The stock boy replied, “No ma’am, they’re dead…”
kit over 3 years ago
The police officer got out of his car as the kid he had stopped for speeding rolled down his window. “I’ve been waiting for you all day.” the officer said.
The kid replied, “Yeah, well I got here as fast as I could.”
When the cop finally stopped laughing, he sent the kid on his way without a ticket.
kit over 3 years ago
A truck driver was driving along on the freeway and noticed a sign that read: Low Bridge Ahead. Before he knew it, the bridge is right in front of him and his truck gets wedged under it. Cars are backed up for miles.
Finally, a police car arrives. The cop gets out of his car and walks to the truck driver, puts his hands on his hips and says, “Got stuck, huh?”
The truck driver says, “No: I was delivering this bridge and I ran out of gas.”
Taracinablue over 3 years ago
I recently learned from gardening videos that gravel at the bottom of a pot doesn’t actually help with draining. And that bottom watering (watering a saucer instead of the dirt on top) cuts way down on fungus gnats.
comicalUser over 3 years ago
Spider/ing plants hanging on hooks from the ceiling . . . maybe?
jamesakronson2 over 3 years ago
Is the Woman really that bad to plants?