Who's holding the wheel here?

I have never had a green thumb. In fact, I come from a lineage of plant killers. I learned at my mother's knee how to overwater, underwater, kill with kindness AND kill by neglect. I can prune down too far, thereby killing by exposure, I can fail to prune and kill by suffocation. I never learned what grows where, which plants like light and which partial shade, and which acidity is bad for which base, thereby making bad plant neighbors. When I do grow a house plant, it is purely by dumb luck. I have one such plant which has been with me for years (YEARS!) and I feel very very fondly for him. He and I get along well, he tells me he needs water by going limp and splaying himself over the pot sides (which I think is very melodramatic, but it's a little game we play) and I usually give in and encourage his performance by giving him what he wants. Spoiled. Very spoiled. This all explains why I have been so comfortable in my new home in Norco. You see, it is a very dry place. Very dusty. Very ... difficult. The lawn I keep is really just volunteer weeds, but when you mow them regularly actually look like grass. The rest of the property is undeveloped. That is my nice way of saying it's just dirt and dry, crispy weeds. I am right at home. At least I WAS, until my fateful trip to Hawaii when I came back inspired to turn my yard into a Tropical Paradise!! I have bought and am tending 4 plumarias, 3 hibiscuses, 2 banana planty looking things and a jasmine. What was I thinking? Very pretty, for sure, but... NEEDY. Sheesh! I feel like I have just been to the pound and came back with a litter of pets. In pots. As you know, I've just come back from a four day weekend away, and came back to find that the house plant evidently threw a party for everybody, and filled the hibiscus with all sorts of crazy ideas about coercion by guilt. I came home to find the orange hibiscus practicing the limbo. So now I have to pay off the plants in miracle gro in small unmarked cups, at a feeding schedule of their choosing. To appease the lot of them, I spent the afternoon mowing the faux lawn, trimming the trees, and sprinklering to make everything look nice and cool and tended. They let me know they prefer it that way, and so it shall be. I must now hasten after them, for I am their leader.