On plants--really, this time

It was soooo gratifying tonight to hear mimazu say, "They're just not my kind of bugs." Aha! Someone got it! (Also gratifying: brownies, the goofy orange-and-white kitty, and thistles' warm hospitality.) The stitching and bitching was lovely.

But today is not so much a bug day as a plant day--or, if you want to use the big words, not so much interpersonal as intrapersonal. I did better today then yesterday with fulfilling my obligations, but there is still much, much work to do. (Oddly, while I neglect my work-for-pay, my home is much cleaner than usual. What's up with that?) Although I have managed to keep alive a row of succulents and a tall ficus tree for several months, my attention is slipping and things are starting to wilt. The cocoa seed bestowed upon me at Valentine's Day is failing to thrive, despite the new soil and careful watering. When my mind is out of order, I will fail to water them for several days or weeks and then, in a rush of guilt, drench them every single day in an effort to get back to the routine. For cacti in closed pots, this is the kiss of death and I often have to start all over. Sometimes my plants live through several bouts of neglect and guilt, cat attack, or other trauma before they give up the ghost. Sometimes my meddling is the last straw--I am furiously trying to remind myself that digging up the cocoa seed will definitely damage it if it is by some miracle still growing down there.

At the greenhouse, it was everyone's job to disbud and centerbud pot mums. These were chrysanthemums that were grown from little sprouts and coaxed and trained into blooming plants, available most months of the year. As they began to bud, we would snap off all the buds on each main stalk except for the bud at the very top (or, alternately, remove the very top bud and let all the side buds come in). It was painstaking, by greenhouse standards, and to accidentally break the top bud when one didn't mean to would ruin the plant. Occasionally we would find grown plants on the tables that had been budded half-and-half: one side all bushy with blooms, the other side in carefully groomed bouquet style. Sometimes we would find plants with two different colors, either because they had been misplanted as sprouts or because the flower had reverted to its genetic type. Sometimes an ill-trained new worker would strip all the side leaves off with the side buds, leaving naked sticks with blooms on top. It never ceased to amaze me that such little interventions could change the outcome so dramatically. (I still like to disbud when I visit the greenhouse, despite the fact that it turns the nails on my thumbs black and I'm not allowed to anymore.)

The plants at my house bear evidence of how I've treated them during the time they manage to survive. My old jade plant was a little bonsai thing, with woody stems and twisted bunches of leaves on the tips of the stalk. My aloe plant had kitty tooth marks on the upper leaves and melting base leaves from my over-watering. The violets ALWAYS have leggy, upturned leaves because they never get enough light and get watered on a cactus schedule. (I've never kept a violet alive for more than six months, however.) The ficus tree has Doyle's claw marks on its trunk, a dead branch that was cracked several months ago but not yet dry enough to let go, and a tumor at the base of its main branch from some invading insect in Florida. They are not typical examples of their species--most are much hardier, but also paler and deformed.

This man in South Carolina has a much more scientific approach than I do. He imagines a plant, and then with his pantyhose and hedge clippers, he coaxes the plant in front of him to take the shape in his mind. great_eye envisions an image and takes just the bit of the plant that she needs in order to make her statement. I, on the other hand, will ignore the plant in front of me and just let it grow, until one day I open my eyes and say, "huh." They're rarely pretty, but they do reflect their history--and me--pretty accurately.

To a certain extent, I grow the same way. The branches snapped off years ago will never take shape. Some of them have green, misplaced shoots growing out of the scar. Even one of my intermediate bosses at work (NOT MY KIND OF BUG) remarked that she felt unexpected grief when she cut down a tree on her new property, knowing that it would never come back (amazingly, sometimes the stumps even sprout back, but they will never look the same). I've never had the stomach to prune my plants well--that's why I stay away from roses and shrubbery and such. In my case, the pruning seems to have caused my other branches to grow in stronger and greener. But I wonder--what would I have looked like without that intervention?