Living, Loving Links

It’s time to give away some aloe plants again. These all came from one I got from my mom. All of hers came from her mom. I don’t know if it goes back farther than that, but for at least three generations this plant and its scions have been entwined with my family. I can remember seeing it on the family farm, Emro. I know for a fact that my brother, sister, and both aunts also have off-spring; I’m sure others, both family and friends, do as well. Its extreme fecundity has very specific characteristics; individual plants do get bigger with age, but most of their energy seems to be devoted to putting out new plants, and getting them to grow to a certain size. Not all aloes do this, I learned some years ago. I rescued another one when a roommate in Alphabet City threw it in the trash, and I immediately noticed different characteristics. It too put out little plants like the Emro aloe, but most of its energy seemed devoted to enlarging the original plant. It got bigger, each frond lengthening and widening, new fronds springing up. Had I not known the truth, I would have sworn it and the Emro plant were two different species.

Eventually I no longer had space for the big guy, so gave him to my friend Megan, where, newly christened Big Al, he has continued to grow. I helped her repot him a couple of years ago, since that is now definitely a two-person job. He dominates Megan’s living room, sitting by the TV, still grows bigger, and frankly seems to have developed an attitude. Look for Big Al on Myspace.

But back to the Emro aloes. These are not the only plants that are descendents of plants from my maternal grandmother; the boston ferns that hang in the kitchen and bathroom are too. One showers me with negative ions (the good, mood-lifting ones) when I’m at the dining table, the other does the same when I shower. At one point Tommy hid his Frodo action figure (you heard me) in the one in the shower; I was lathering up one day to realize I had a tiny little peeping Tom. "Where's Frodo?" has become a new sport.

Then there is the angel-wing begonia; it too comes from an Emro plant, and has relatives living with several of mine. Actually, since they’re all cuttings, that means they’re technically all part of the same plant, which is even cooler, don't you think? This is the plant that seemed to be at death’s door back in September. I’m cautiously optimistic these days; it’s putting out more leaves and they look healthy. I doubt it will ever regain its former glory (it was five feet tall at one point), but at least it no longer looks like a sad skeleton.

Then there are the plants who were here in the apartment when I moved in, left by the previous tenant. There was a spider plant hanging in the kitchen where the boston fern is now. Ginger told me she’d had it since college, and had brought it with her everywhere she’d lived since (no, I don't know why she left it here). Hanging in the kitchen window, it felt like it was at the center of the apartment. I began thinking of it almost as the spirit of the place. It's funny to realize it had lived here longer than me. I started calling her Grandmother Spider, in recognition of her age and prolific outgrowth. It seemed to fit. She was even more prolific than the Emro aloes; runners and plantlets spilled over the pot, cascading down the window -which faces north, by the way, on a narrow courtyard, and is not someplace I would have expected a spider plant to thrive. For a while I had two of her sons (don’t ask me why I thought they were male, but I did) hanging in the two windows of the living room (facing east, also on the courtyard). They were both smaller, springing up with a youthful vigor and a deeper green. Brian, when he lived here, found these two plants disconcerting. When they began putting out runners and baby plants, he could never quite shake the feeling that if he sat in front of the TV too long, they would end up sinking roots into his flesh.

It wasn’t long, with all three hanging plants merrily reproducing, before we were neck-deep in plantlets. Brian was sure they were going to smother us in our sleep one night, and even I began feeling a tad overwhelmed. I was able to give several away, but many more were left wanting homes; scores of them sat in water, growing roots that became increasingly entangled with one another. Eventually through a combination of give away and culling (Grandma was allowed to continue reproducing, but both the boys lost that privilege), I was able to whittle things back, finally ending up only with Grandmother Spider. She was starting to look a bit peaked by this point though, and I realized she was potbound. The repotting didn’t seem to go well, perhaps because I had to break up the ball into separate plants. She never really regained her old vigor, and just faded away. I wonder if plants can die of old age? She had to have been at least twenty, possibly thirty years old. I was sad, but frankly also a bit relieved. With her gone, I felt like yet one more significant influence of the previous tenant had been allowed to fade naturally, and I was now, almost eight years after taking over the lease, able to invite a new spirit plant into the center of my home. So that is where the second Boston fern went. At present there are no spider plants living in this apartment at all, and I’m feeling like that’s okay. If I ever feel the need for one though, I know Grandma has offspring throughout the city, in the homes of many friends. I can even say hi to one of the sons anytime I want, since he sits in a first floor window not far from my building. He is allowed to reproduce again, and seems to like the southern exposure.

The other plant I inherited with the apartment is a golden pothos. When I first moved in, two or three short cuttings of this plant were sitting in a big, heavy blue vase. I have no idea how long they had been there. They were in the office, which at the time was mostly Kurt’s domain, so I assumed they were his. (Like the plants, I inherited Kurt as a roommate, and it also worked out splendidly.) After a few years though, I began to feel badly for the cuttings, so I appropriated, potted, and moved them to the living room (which, at the time, was exclusively my domain). I don’t remember when exactly I stopped pruning it back, and tying it to a string along the wall, but I think it happened no more than five, maybe six years ago. I’d keep wrapping it around the room, if there weren’t a heating pipe in the way now that would singe it. I’m doubling it back, and giving cuttings to anyone who asks for one, as long as he or she is standing right in front of me, hand out ready to take it that instant. I can't handle the guilt of homeless plants any longer.

This scattering of green throughout my space has helped save my sanity, I have no doubt. Their calming green and reminders of older, more important rhythms is often a good wake-up call for me. I also like the feeling of connection they give me: to my grandmother, the family farm, my mom, aunts, siblings and friends across the country, even former residents -known and not- of apartment #20. I imagine a greensong linking the plants with their counterparts regardless of distance, shrinking the space between me and my loved ones, and strengthening our bonds.

Convenient Skepticism

I think astrology is a crock. I mean, come ON, you've got huge balls of flaming gas that are gazillions of light years away from us and each other. When observed from earth, they mark out a pattern that someone ages ago thought suggested a crab or a goat or something, then that ancient observer decided that when the sun, moon, or one of the planets crossed into those animal outlines, this somehow exerted mysterious yet powerful forces on a newborn, that was, this is key, markedly different from the effect it was having on everyone else on the planet at that moment, and thus ended up shaping that baby's drives, emotions, general characteristics etc. I mean, really. Even if we accept the idea that all bodies in the universe are exerting gravitational pulls on every other body, do we really think that the star Sirius is exerting more force on us in September than it is in June? Nope, this is all nonsense.

That said, I love astrology. I think it's a fun little construct, I love how elaborate it is, and I want to know it better. I have on occasion correctly guessed a new acquaintance's sign, and am always pleased when information I read is accurate about me. Seven years in Seattle generally made me more open to hearing about this sort of thing, and a good friend once even did my entire chart. Sadly, it seems to have gotten lost in one of my dozen moves, and I don't really remember what it said, other than the fact that I am a Cancer sun, Pisces moon, and rising sign Gemini, and the rising sign is supposedly a more accurate representation of my personality than the sun sign, the latter is just easier to figure out. Astrology is fun, I enjoy reading about it, discussing it, learning about it, though I don't buy it for a moment.

I have a similar reaction to Feng Shui. Okay with that one I think there are more elements that have validity, being good sense, or good design. Science has found that different colors affect our moods differently, for example, so why not make use of that in our homes? No, your life won't magicly be filled with serenity and riches if you paint your living room orange, but you might feel more cozy there, and what's wrong with that? Feng Shui also recommends a desk always be positioned so one can see the door to the room when seated at it, and while this had never really occurred to me before, I realized that all those times when I had been sitting with my back to a door, deep in concentration, only to find myself hanging from my fingernails embedded in the ceiling when someone tapped me on the shoulder... all those moments could have been avoided if I had just faced the stupid desk the other way.

Now, once you get into the ba gua, and all the different quandrants of the room, house, neighborhood, where the left-hand corner (as seen when standing in the 'main doorway') affects your family life, but it's different if it's on the south side of the building, and if the room is shaped in such a way that this quadrant is 'missing' then you need to do complicated things with mirrors in order to strengthen that missing part, or weaken the adjacent part which might overwhelming your family quandrant... that's where I check out. I would imagine that's also the stuff some clever-boots hundreds of years ago came up with so he would have be able to make money 'tuning' other people's homes, and teaching them secret knowledge.

Okay, so Feng Shui, also a crock, but again, a fun little construct I enjoy reading about and tinkering with, seeing if my mood changes notably if I put up some metal wind chimes (though not too big as this will 'damage my liver'). One suggestion is to have plants in certain areas, to strengthen that area and give it vibrancy. Naturally there are rules about how to do this; I think if that area already has an excess of wood, then a plant is a really bad idea, and one should instead introduce more metal (which cuts wood, dontcha know) to tone things down, I don't really get any of that, mostly because I can't be bothered.

One source I read said it's a good idea to have a plant in your career quadrant, to keep your professional life healthy and expanding. I liked this idea. I had absolutely no idea which quadrant was my 'career' area, nor did I know if I needed to locate it in each room, or only once in the apartment as a whole, and what would I do if the career area for the whole place was in my roommate's room, evict him? No, I just decided to designate one of my houseplants my 'career plant.' I didn't mean it now had magical powers in my life, I just thought it might be useful to have something I regularly looked at and cared for be a meditative focus for an important element of my life. I liked the idea that a career thrives in the same way a plant does, that you have to take care of it, see to its basic needs for food, light and air, check it for disease or parasites and treat it accordingly, but just as important you had to know when to leave it alone, and let it do its own thing. A career needs many of the same things, daily attention, careful maintenance, trust and patience.

So, I chose my angel wing begonia to be the focus of career meditations. This plant is a scion of my grandmother's begonia; at least two of her children took cuttings from it, my sister, brother and I all have cuttings from my mother's plant, so it felt like this plant was well woven into my family's life. It connected me to my relatives and the Iowa farm that was in my mother's family for over a hundred years. It is also a beautiful plant, with big leaves that can be green to salmon color with metallic silver spots, and it puts out blooms that will go through three distinct shapes, that can be anywhere from white to deep red, depending on how much sunlight they get. My plant in particular had already attained an impressive height and vigor, due to the fact that it spent most of its life in a southern window. At one point it was almost six feet tall, with stalks over an inch in diameter weaving around one another, covered with lush, big leaves. Beautiful, healthy, fertile, it was everything I could hope for in a career.

That was three or four years ago. This summer things took a slight turn for the worst. The plant started dropping leaves more quickly than usual and they often had weird burned edges, soft, pale rotten spots, or both. Still, as a whole the plant seemed fine, and I assumed maybe I was watering it too much, or something. Then when I went to Indiana for the month of August, my roommate was uncharacteristically careless in caring for my plants. In a month he watered them all exactly once. I was lucky only to lose two plants, everything else rallied, but when I walked in the door, the begonia looked very distressed, it proud upright stalks all keeled over limply. The plant's distress couldn't have been clearer or more eloquent (not sure how my roommate managed to miss it).

Okay, so, if there were any lessons to learn here about my career -and I'm not saying there are, mind you, but if there were- then maybe it might be something like I shouldn't expect to leave my career in the hands of others, that it is ultimately my responsibility and even if I do need the help of others, I should make my needs clear and make sure the person I ask is willing and able to fill that need. Okay, that seems like a useful lesson. I wouldn't say it was exactly NEWS to me, but hey, learning is often re-learning, in fact when it comes to acting it's almost ALL re-learning, so okay, got it.

I quickly watered the plant, and hoped it would rally. The limp stalks never regained their strength, though, and that was just the beginning. The leaf drop began to pick up, and the burned edges and soft rotten spots grew and spread. I wondered if the prisms in my window were burning the plants in spots, but if so, I don't know why that would suddenly be a problem now, after nearly eight years without mishap, no, I didn't know what had changed, but clearly something had. I checked one of my houseplant books, and began to suspect my poor begonia had a fungus and due to the month of neglect the fungus had become overpowering.

Okay, less certain how to interprete this in metaphorical terms regarding my career. Sometimes your work gets moldy? Sometimes outside forces make your professional leaves rot and fall off? You always have to be prepared to prune your career and spray it with a good fungicide? I got nothin'.

Per the plant book's instructions, I have cut away all the sickly parts of the plant, which means it now has a whole lot of four foot stumps, and the remains of thick stalks that now hold only a single, tiny leaf aloft. I discovered this morning that the scented geraniums nearest the begonia may have also contracted the fungus, so I've pruned and quarantined the worse of the two.

On a side note, a rosemary plant I bought a few weeks ago somehow managed to contract aphids. In a fifth story walk-up. In Harlem. Hmm, a few years back, before it was designated my career plant, the begonia also contracted aphids. It rallied nicely after treatment, but maybe that should have warned me about something. Getting a fungus is bad enough, but when my plants have aphids, it's hard not to feel like I've come down with parasites myself. Very weird.

I'll be sorry if I have to lose this plant all together. It started out as a six inch cutting I got from my mom's plant soon after I moved into this apartment, so its growth and change has stood as a record of my eight year residency. It has helped me deal with my ambivalence about city living. If I have to get rid of it, it will be too bad, my plants do feel a bit like small green pets to me, but I can always get another cutting from the same plant. My mom's, sister's and brother's plants were all thriving when I saw them in August. It will be not the end of the world by any stretch.

I just want it on record that I really, really, REALLY do not believe in Feng Shui.