Planting

Digging in dirt is therapeutic. Spent my Saturday with plants, supper with friends, and re-reading old books.

The above is an epiphytic orchid with deep green leaves and a purple underside. The old man who sold it to me some years back said he had gotten it from some wild place, never gotten it to flower, and didn't know the type. I got a propagation of his original. It was on a bark tablet then, but not doing well. I repotted it into a clay pot with a mix of charcoal and tree bark. I'll know in a month or so if the roots take, and perhaps, I'll see flowers sometime.

Repotted another one I'd gotten from our Botanic Gardens (bought legally!) into a mix of tree bark and charcoal, in a hanging basket of coconut fibre. It flowered only once in the last years, a spray of tiny 2-3 inch flowers with deep red-purple, thrice-twisted petals and a white heart. A sweet fragrance too, which is rare of orchids. Typically, only the white dendrobiums have a noticeable fragrance, as if to make up for the lack of colour.

Both have a little clod of moss to keep them company too. Besides that, also planted a tiny aloe vera sapling, some clitoria and chilli seeds.

Tiny seeds, greening shoots. Hope.

The orchids were not struggling, but they were not growing either. Breaking the clay pots meant giving new ground. We take a risk with transplanting, and with rarer species, it is a hard choice. I do not know if I could find those specimens of orchids again.

We are often told to flourish where you are planted, or seek new grounds. Like my epiphyte of purple leaves, I've done both, perhaps with the same result as it has. Yet neither wishing nor waiting changes whether something grows or dies.

Air, sunlight, darkness, water, fertilizer.

All I can do is provide the conditions.

Each in their own time.