It started with an orchid, three to be exact. We were sent home to work remotely for an unspecified amount of time and a colleague asked me to take the orchids he had been reviving in an office window. Apparently, he didn’t think his apartment was well suited.
“Why do you want to kill them?” I asked.
“You won’t kill them,” he said while shaking his head with disapproval. “I’ll show you.” He grabbed two pots that had Phalaenopsis orchids that had lost their flowers, but thick green leaves remained. He pointed to a third pot, indicating that I was to bring it and follow him into the break room. After turning on the faucet and letting the water run through the pot, soaking all the bark chips as the water drained through holes into the sink, he looked at me. “Give them a bath once a week and put them in a south-facing window.”
“I thought orchids were super hard to care for,” I began in mild protest.
“People usually over water them or throw them out after the flowers drop. But this type of orchid will bloom every year for months at a time. You need to keep bathing them weekly, even after the flowers are gone. Can you do that?”
“Uh, yeah, that sounds fairly straightforward. You sure they don’t need some special food or something?”
“Just the water and window.”
Four and a half years later those orchids continue to bloom every spring in my south-facing window. I bought more houseplants that first year, started an outdoor container garden of flowers the next, and planted bulbs into the ground last year. I consider myself a gardener now, though maybe not a great one, or even a good one.
I came back from a two-week work trip to flowering sedum and purple dahlia blossoms, but half of the outdoor container plants looked dead because I relied on rain that never came. My heart sank seeing all the dried leaves, but I know some will regrow.
Two winters ago, a harsh frost nearly killed my Southern Jasmine. I thought they were dead. Still, I cut the whole thing down to the nub and kept watering. This spring two trellises full of flowers offered sweet scents when I walked by. The nature of the universe is to heal itself. I need a little patience and to stay out of its way. As Alan Watts said, “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” So, when I came back from my work trip to a half dead container garden, I brought out my hose and clippers, ready to begin the regrowth.
I only need the smallest sign of green to have hope. The Asian Jasmine is full of yellowed leaves on yellow stems, but two stems have the faintest shade of green. I amputate all the I can bear to cut. The Fig Tree that I was hoping to grow bonsai-style already dropped all its brown leaves, but there are buds of green poking through the end of each branch. I’ll keep watering and see if they stay. The Lemon Verbena looks utterly hopeless, no leaves or buds, and all brown stems, but there is a hint of green inside the stems after I cut them down. Let’s see what happens with sunshine and water. I reinstate my daily morning irrigation as the summer heat persists and my perspective shifts. I’m looking for details that I often overlook. I pay attention to things that I previously ignored. I notice much that I thought irrelevant before.
One morning, after watering all the plants and observing from my deck, I heard the distinctive call of a cardinal. It’s a high-pitched piercing call that sounds to me like a worn-out car engine. It was quickly followed by a string of different bird songs, as if the trees in my backyard were an aviary full of varying species. I pulled out my smartphone and clicked the Merlin app, a kind of Shazam for bird songs. It was only one bird, one bird that sings more than a thousand songs. This bird can mimic other birds as well as sing its own. The male and female look identical, and though they are reported as being monogamous, Wikipedia says that “mate-switching does occur.” It’s also the state bird of Georgia, and should I become a birder, the brown thrasher would be my spark bird. Hearing the Georgia Brown Thrasher wasn’t a life-changing moment, but now I listen for them each morning.
###
Alan Watts was a beatnik philosopher from the 1950s and 60s. He was born in England but came to Illinois for Seminary school and began his career in California to teach Asian Studies – sharing his understanding of Hinduism, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to record his talks, and most are freely available on the Internet. Watts was a self-professed “philosophical entertainer,” presenting simple ways to describe spirituality and metacognition. For example, he talked about two different consciousnesses that we have, the spotlight and the floodlights. We tend to favor the spotlight, and that’s our ego. But the floodlights are what get us there safely when we’re driving with a friend while focusing on the conversation. The spotlight listens to the friend. The floodlights drive the car. In the cool quiet of dawn, I switch to my floodlights-consciousness, and practice brightening my garden before the sun rises.
A Childless Plant Lady Blog 