Why Plants Die
and Other Happy Thoughts
Sometimes the best advice comes from a plant.
A warm, thoughtful exploration of grief, survival, resilience, hope, and the quiet work of growing through seasons we did not choose.
What if the plant has been watching us?
Some stories begin with a person looking at a plant. This one asks what happens if the plant has been looking back.
Frances has spent years quietly observing human life from her place in a psychiatrist's office. She has seen people arrive carrying grief, fear, transition, hope, disappointment, and all the complicated things humans keep trying to hide from themselves.
Plants understand storms. They understand being moved. They understand seasons that look like death before anything new appears.
Sharon came looking for help. Frances had been paying attention.
Growth is rarely pretty. That does not mean it isn't happening.
As Sharon struggles under the weight of change, grief, and survival, Frances offers a perspective rooted in something humans often forget: the most important growth frequently happens where nobody can see it.
Meet Frances. Meet Sharon.
Frances
The plant who has seen more than anybody realizes.
Frances is observant, occasionally opinionated, patient in the way plants have to be, and surprisingly qualified to comment on the human condition.
Droughts, replantings, pruning, waiting, sunlight, and survival have given her a language for growth that does not rely on pretending everything is fine.
Sharon
The woman trying to understand what is happening to her life.
Sharon is carrying change, grief, questions, and the pressure to somehow keep functioning through all of it.
Her journey gives Frances's observations somewhere human to land— in the ordinary, difficult space between surviving a season and realizing you are still growing inside it.
This book does not ask you to hurry through the hard part.
It makes room for grief, reflection, humor, faith, frustration, recovery, and the strange truth that life can still be growing while it feels completely still.
This book may be for you if...
- You are walking through grief, change, or a season you never planned.
- You have grown tired of advice that makes difficult things sound easy.
- You enjoy reflection that leaves room for both faith and honest questions.
- You are a gardener who knows plants have been teaching us more than horticulture.
- You care for other people and sometimes forget that you are growing too.
- You need hope, but not the kind that requires pretending nothing hurts.
Soil-and-soul themes.
Growth
Especially the kind nobody can see yet.
Grief
Not something to rush, but something to understand.
Resilience
The quiet work of remaining alive and reaching.
Humor
Because plants and people can both be ridiculous.
Hope
Not denial. A reason to keep tending.
Unseen Work
Roots often deepen before anything blooms.
“I can’t do a chapter a week— when I start reading I can’t stop. You have a real God-given gift for putting such hard feelings into words in a way of understanding them and knowing what to do with them. Your book came at a perfect time in my life.”
Choose how the story reaches you.
Audiobook
Let the reflections travel with you while you drive, walk, garden, or simply sit still.
Listen To The AudiobookYour Library
Libraries have always mattered to Eileen. If your local library does not have the book, ask whether they accept reader purchase requests.
Ask About Library AvailabilityRoots of Reflection
Thoughts are seeds. Naming what has been planted helps us understand what may be taking root inside us.
The companion reflection journal gives readers space to slow down, respond to the themes in the book, and tend their own inner garden.
Join The COMpost and continue reflecting.
- Guided reflection prompts
- Garden-inspired reflection pages
- Space to dream, write, notice, and grow
- RootsOMG updates, essays, books, music, and Grow Party news
Because every gardener deserves good tools for tending the soul.
Eileen Colette
Author. Gardener. Nurse. Songwriter. One life, many ways of paying attention.
Eileen's work lives at the intersection of practical gardening, emotional survival, creativity, faith, humor, and the ordinary things that quietly teach us how to live.
Why Plants Die and Other Happy Thoughts grew from the same idea that shaped RootsOMG: gardens have a way of teaching life lessons whether we asked for them or not.
Meet EileenMore stories about what grows in impossible places.
RootsOMG is also home to literary fiction from Cisco Mills—stories of grief, survival, faith, and the strange places where something living still finds a way through.
Still Garden
When grief becomes a garden, healing takes root in unexpected ways.
Twenty-two-year-old David Mills never planned on inheriting his grandfather's house. He also never planned on losing both his mother and grandfather within weeks of each other.
Then Samantha— his mother's old philodendron— begins to speak. Through unexpected friendships, faith that refuses easy answers, and the patient work of tending what remains, David begins learning that brokenness can become fertile ground.
Explore Still Garden
Vera
A broken photographer. A patient plant. Five days that change everything.
Chara has spent twelve years making her life smaller. Then a solo hike ends in a fall, leaving her stranded on a canyon ledge with a shattered leg and no way to signal for rescue.
Beside her is Vera— a hosta growing from a crack in the stone, where she has waited seven years without knowing what for. Five days, and both of them find out.
Explore VeraSome growth happens where nobody can see it.
Whether the story begins in a psychiatrist's office, a still garden, or on a canyon ledge, these books return to the same quiet possibility: something may still be growing.
Buy Why Plants Die Join The COMpost