Orchids

Last year, my dad got my mom an orchid plant for their anniversary. We have not yet been able to kill it with our evil powers of the "brown thumb," the anti-green thumb.*

Orchids are always viewed as delicate things, maybe because they is often considered one of the more beautiful flowers. But man, this plant is hearty. Its flowers and their part of the stem died, but it has mayhaps three times the blooms this year. It is in a sunny room, but you can see it just growing up against the window to try to get more. It has weird, rooty things that grew up and around the outside of the pot.

You're supposed to put three ice cubes in the pot once a week so that it gets its water slowly as the ice melts. We end up watering it for two weeks in a row and then for get about it for a month and a half.

But no matter what we do, we can't seem to discourage its life-giving force.*

This speaks volumes to me, as someone who looks for metaphors in everything (or maybe I don't. I can't decide). This simple plant that has been unwillingly place high on a pedestal, with everyone rushing around to do even the simplest of tasks of photosynthesis for it, for no other reason than because it doesn't look like it could handle it. Or because its "pretty." Either way, this flower has unwittingly been turned into a martyr for all things misunderstood, underestimated, and/or female. Simple Orchid, I salute you for having the courage to be beautiful and bad-ass.

*Disclamer: we are not purposefully trying to kill the plant. That just seems to happen whenever I am living in the same household as an oxygen excreting organism.