My birthday is usually in february - february the 25th like George Harrison's - u no I'm one of the very few elected & superior people who were born on this special day in a mysterious frosty winter's midnight - anyway - on my last birthday the daughter of my thai'ish friend Peo gave me this orchid-like plant, a pot-flower, as birthday present - it had this rose coloured blossom & some tiny flower buds on it - I smelled at the flower & liked the distinct odour I imagined to have smelled -
Usually plants who are very greedy with water don't have much chance to survive in my flat, because I'm so forgetful about all this watering stuff - usually only cactusses survive in my flat - they understand me & I understand them - they have sharp pricks - means 'leave me alone' - & don't need all this tedious daily attendance & I - in response - don't want them to crawl into my bed - they have their live & I mine - from time to time I even think to give them water - & a little bit more seldom I also give them water, when I think about giving them water (sometimes there is a long way between planning & acting)
- but these hardliners of plants used to live by the rules of a merciless desert are thankful, when the rain of my watering hand happens at least to them -
in the moment I water them I'm full of bad conscience & ask them to forgive me for having forgotten them so long & they understand, that I have so much else in my daily life to do & then I give them so much water, that they nearly drown -
but cactusses are clever, like camels & Dune-inhabitants, they suck & hoard the water in secret places somewhere within themselves somewhere & so can live almost forever by these stockpiling - hmm not totally forever told me once a dying cactus on the window sill
my apparently most clever cactus - a snake cactus with really long spiky tentacle branches hanging from the ceiling expearienced with some of his most extended air roots through a very small crack in the coverage the entrance to my thai-eel aquarium, & it's roots spread there so much, that the long & twining, tangling branches overwhelm the whole era at that window , threatens to strangle anything that comes close to them - hmm - I'm gonna buy a machete..
but back to the my orchid birthday present - I valued it so much, that I even watered it continiously in fear it might dry or die & since a half year it had one blossom after the other, new buds were spreading all the time & it really enjoyed my heart to watch occasionally this ever-blossoming plant..
but then - just recently I moved this flowerpot to another place (actually I set in a small basin 10 cm filled with water, to reload her sorrowly because - oops I had forgotten to water it for a while) - but while moving it back the whole evergrowing branch with the blossom the buds broke & fell of - I was shocked - looked closer at that branch & noticed that the lower end of the branch was dark brown like it had dried out before this accident, so probably broke off not only of my clumsiness.
But while watching the lost blossom branch closer I noticed, that it was artificial- argh! - She gave me a plant with an artificial flower, - I cared for it about half a year long & thought it was all the time getting new blossoms & didn't notice, that it was just an artificial flower
I hope Thuj's next year's birthday present won't be a dog or something like that - probably I'll feed, stroke that dog, take him twice the day for a walk - just to notice after half an year that it's just an artificial stuffed animal doll..
may I have to buy stronger glasses..
& maybe people should stop giving me alive presents , be it plants, animals or little children - it's all a lot of work & tedious -
a picture of a beautyful orchid to hang on the wall would be just the right thing for me - nothing to be watered.. - or do aquarells need watering?
