I bought a plant for my apartment. Let’s call him Planty.
It took somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes to pick Planty out from among his peers to be my own. Calling it a journey of discovery would be a tad misguided since most of the time was made up of standing still glaring at plant information tabs and wondering how I could convert units such as direct, indirect, or low to lumens, and how I didn’t know what a lumen actually was. I also started wondering about which direction my windows face and why my school didn’t offer Guugu Yimithirr as a foreign language (what?); would’ve been useful – what’s that saying about hindsight?
After I paced back and forth between shrubbery, bushes, miniature trees, flowers, and the like – cautiously dragging my flip-flop laden (slightly cold) feet so as not to wet and rewet them with what I assumed to be leftovers of Planty’s lunch - I decided to pick the Peace Lily, Planty the Peace Lily. My decision was based on some algorithm involving size, maintenance upkeep, color, and sunlight and window face direction estimations. What the formula actually was; I can’t recall.
I bought the plant from a cashier from Home Depot. Let’s call her Home Depot Lady.
I finally walked over to the check out aisle, most probably to the relief of Home Depot Lady. She really liked my selection of plant, and gave me some tips on how to care for it. A good amount of sunlight and not too much water. She felt the soil and mystically gathered how much moisture was within, sharing that I wouldn’t have to water Planty for another week; 7 days. A warning though: too much water and Planty would become jaundiced; not enough water – and Planty would start looking… well, more like me.
My new plant needed some space that required moving stuff around. Let’s call it Rearrangement.
I started noticing how much bigger or smaller you can make a room look by simply shifting a couch or table a few inches one way or the other. Even though the physical distance between the couch and the television hadn’t changed, it seemed a lot farther away. I didn’t consider Rearrangement in my algorithm. Planty – high maintenance.
Day 5 – Planty starts drooping. Day 5 != Day 7, so it can’t be a lack of water… clearly it’s not in the right position to get the most sunlight. I moved Planty around the apartment as the sun moved across the sky to make sure he got what he needed, all the while thinking, “This is definitely not sustainable.” No matter; Planty kept getting more and more depressed as the day rolled on.
My vast knowledge of botany is summarized as follows: Sunlight + Water = Healthy Plant. If Sunlight goes up, but Healthy Plant is still going down, Water must be going down faster than Sunlight rises.
A good washing down, and a day later, Planty was stretching upward and outward.
It taught me something. Planty did what he could with what he had. Regardless of how much Planty “tried” to look healthy, it didn’t amount to much – at least to an outside perspective like my own.
I think people are like that sometimes. Those things that we pride ourselves in; things that we would like to define ourselves by are things that we are most willing to hide when we think they are deficient. Although not especially enlightening, when we try to be strong, or do the best with what we’ve got – distracting outsiders with charades so our wounds are hidden – we tend to expose ourselves even further.
