For two years we’ve had an ugly plant taking up space on the kitchen windowsill. It wasn’t originally ugly. It was actually extremely beautiful. It’s an orchid. It entered our home in full glorious bloom with a gorgeous cluster of elegant purple flowers on the end of a tall stem. Eventually though, the flowers completed their cycle and dropped off and the tall stem withered away, leaving a cluster of unspectacular leaves all alone in the pot.
If you’ve ever looked at the leaves of an orchid (I know I hadn’t – they take back stage to the arrogant front-and-center blooms) you’ll know that they are not elegant, though fairly sturdy looking. Without the notorious intricate blooms, the plant looks like a squat, awkward 8th grader who has just undergone a growth spurt and doesn’t know how to maneuver yet. It sat in this state for months.
Then it started to sprout weird skinny ‘arms’. They grew much more quickly than the leaves. Sometimes they seemed to gain inches in length overnight. Suddenly this slightly odd simple plant became an alien life form. The arms followed no logical direction. They extended up, out, down, and around in a random, almost obscene way.
That’s when the plant started to offend Dad.
What do you suggest we do about that thing?
Occasionally at first, then more and more often, the sorry plant with the spindly snaky roots would catch Dad’s eye. He’d stare at it, frown, and then ask us what we thought he should do about it.
We assured him that no action was needed. The ugly plant was, I suggested, like the Ugly Duckling who grew up to be an elegant swan. We told him we were waiting for the plant to bloom, and he’d calm down… until he noticed the plant again.
Every time a new root sprouted, Mom would get excited, sure that one of these spindly arms would grow into a flower stem. She actually thought that the creepy vines were the flower stems. She kept trying to coax them into climbing the vertical wire that had supported the original blooms. Personally, I didn’t have much faith in the plant. I’d never seen an orchid survive to bloom a second time.
The fate of the Ugly Duckling plant started to look grim when Dad stopped asking us what he should do about it. Generally, when he stops asking about something, it means he’s decided to form his own plan of action. In his eyes, this eyesore needed to be put out of its misery. At the very least, it should be banished to some less visible location.
The power of the sun
While Dad quietly plotted his planticide, Mom inadvertently solved the problem by moving the pot to the dining room table. It didn’t catch Dad’s eye nearly as often here, and was able to continue it’s grotesque root growth in peace.
Mom thought the dining room would be warmer than the windowsill. She must have been on to something, because a few weeks after its relocation, a new sprout emerged that had a slightly different look than the roots. As it grew, it became clear that it was distinctly different. The plant had finally launched a bloom stem.
Mom was elated. She hadn’t believed me that the other tentacles were all roots, but she didn’t deny that this one was different. She was also quite pleased to see that it grew straight upward as well. Believing that now the plant needed sun more than warmth, she moved the pot back onto the windowsill.
That brought it back into Dad’s line of sight.
I’ll do something about that tomorrow
It wasn’t really his fault that he didn’t see the change in the plant. Without any visible buds, the flower stem didn’t look much different to the roots. Dad would stare at the plant. I would try to preempt his comments by telling him that the plant was fine. It really is supposed to look like that, I would tell him.
Now, instead of asking for our thoughts, he’d simply assure us that he’d “take care of that thing after lunch” (or dinner, depending on the time of day). Mom, proud of her growing orchid baby, would go into Mamma Bear mode and snap at him that it was fine. She felt that was enough to discourage him, but I knew better.
I started lingering in the kitchen after meals to guard the plant.
Then one day, while preparing dinner, he came into the kitchen to set the table. Suddenly I stopped what I was doing because I heard an odd rustling sound behind me… from the direction of the windowsill. I turned to see Dad bent over the orchid pot. I could hear him messing with the plant.
“Stop!” I shouted, possibly a little too loud.
He jumped and turned around. I was prepared to see a handful of roots and possibly the flower stem in his hand.
“Just leave the plant alone please! That’s Mom’s, and it’s fine.”
He looked shocked. He said he was just looking at it, and insisted that he’d never mess with the plant. I was relieved to see that his hands were empty as he walked away. I do know that I definitely heard him doing something with the plant, so I went in for a closer look.
Apparently Candy Cane is the new thing in fertilizer?!
It must have liked the sugar boost, because the orchid finally developed buds and then bloomed. Who knew?
