They're different from us, which means they can't be trusted

It's no big secret that I'm not a gardener by any stretch of the imagination. As my sister Heather would say, I have "harsh brown thumbs of death."

Apparently my students haven't caught on to that yet. But this may not be entirely my fault.

You see, a few weeks before Christmas, one of my students gifted me an amaryllis bulb, which came with a pot and some potting soil. I washed my hands of planting the thing by "allowing" some students to do it for me. Similarly, I "allowed" my students to take turns watering it each day.

It started growing pretty quickly, much to the delight of all. And when Christmas break rolled around, I oh-so-generously permitted the girl who gave me the plant to take it home and care for it during the vacation.

After the break, it finally started to bloom -- the pinnacle event we all were waiting for.

And then our school had new carpet installed. And, well, the amaryllis met a tragic demise in the process of moving furniture out of the classroom -- you could say it made fast friends with the floor. The stalks broken, the flowers wilted, the plant never made a true recovery. It kept getting more and more sickly until I finally threw it away a week or so ago. Plus it was attracting bugs, so the dude needed to go.

Then, for Valentine's Day, a different student gave me three potted tulips. I watered it faithfully for the two whole days before the three-day weekend, hoping that it wouldn't shrivel up and die in the meantime. Well, when I came to school this morning, it definitely didn't look super healthy. But maybe it could make a comeback with a little extra water and TLC.

And then one of my students fell onto my desk (?) and crushed two of the three flowers. We'll see how long I keep this one around before introducing it so the circular file.

Apparently we can't have nice things in our room.