The retarded green thumb

This weekend I will be attending a bridal shower for my cousin's fiancee, the ever lovely Anne.

It is a garden party in their newly dug out garden, and suggested gifts were native plants or herbs. So husband and I trundled off to the local Bunnings (which holds far too many temptations and fun stuff for me to visit too regularly - Bunnings is the new Ikea) to look in the nursery for a suitable gift.

With the fumes of blood and bone making me a bit high we began our hunting. I was bent on buying something with a humorous or clever name, in fact I found one called Blushing Bride, but I settled on a nice plant instead. (^_^)

All very interesting, I know, but what's with the title of this post?

I'm too scared to re-pot the plant into the nice pot that I bought because I have an uncanny ability for killing pot plants. My green thumb is either very 'special' or is completely the wrong colour.

I would be more worried about this if I was superstitious. Every single plant I was given at my bridal shower died, which so far (a year) has not jinxed our marriage, but I don't think I can run the risk of killing this gift and jinxing someone else's marriage. Too much guilt!

Is it wrong to give the plant in its plastic pot, separate to the ceramic pot and a bag of potting mix as a gift? I'm just not confident that the plant will survive if I do the re-potting.

I'd like to have more of a green thumb though. I enjoy pretending that all the lemons on our tree are due to some excellent skill of mine, even though I know that the tree does this all on its own (with the help of some bees maybe) and that it was already fruiting when we moved in.

I like the idea of having a nice garden, and doing nice things in the garden, but because we're renting I don't like to invest too much time or energy (or money) into the garden. This leaves me with the option of having pot plants, which of course I am totally crap at. Perhaps fake plants are the way of the future???