1109 Wandering Plants

1109 Wandering Plants

It’s magic.  The various flowers and mini-trees migrate from one part of the house to another.  Somehow.

There are 20 live ones and about a half dozen fakes.  But they all must have legs.

They are rarely in the same place today that they were yesterday.  There’s no telling how that happens, though I suspect there is a Prime Mover.

A “money tree,” a few orchids, a couple of bamboos, a vase of wheat-like stalks.  A glass bowl of curly willows, and on and on.  They switch places, usually overnight but sometimes in broad daylight.  And figuring out how they swap places or find new places?  That’s a complete mystery.

They find new corners.  Surely, they must walk.  But without legs, how do they do that?

They travel silently.  But they travel.  And never when you can see them do it.

Orchids have a wide following of people who have huge books on how to take care of them.  Ours just grow and make new flowers.

Poinsettias are fragile and last only a short time.  Except ours.   One has lived for two or three years with absolutely no care except a daily watering.

Okay, okay, the fake ones stay as they are forever because they’re made of plastic and paper and wire.  Easy to understand.

But the vines?  The ignored vines?  They just keep growing.  You can’t kill them.  And putting them in the trash is murder!  You trim them and they just grow back.

Your correspondent has a black thumb.  He can’t grow a decent potato in Long Island sand, famous for its potatoes.  You can grow a potato in air, for cryin’ out loud.  Here, they flourish.

Onions here grow scallions.  Bury them in the woods and they still grow scallions.

Okay, maybe it’s because everything grows well in central PA.  Or maybe it’s magic.  We live on what used to be farm, forest and deer country.  The deer still show up.  The trees still grow.  The plants still move around as if they had legs.

Even inside the house.

There are a few exceptions to the constant growth. Around here, you plant tomatoes, and nothing happens.  But throw a few watermelon seeds into a pot of dirt and ignore it, and six months later you get a watermelon.

Fellow citybillies take heed:  there’s no telling what happens in nature.

In the meantime, if anyone can say how the plants migrate from room to room, please speak up.

Shrapnel:

--President, George W. Bush appeared astounded at the way grocery checkouts work (unlike his father who was also once stalled on a supermarket line, but didn’t really care.) So amazed was Bush II, that he honored the inventors of the barcode at a ceremony in the White House.  Now, one of the two co inventors, Norman Woodland has died at the age of 91.

--The other co-inventor, Bernard Silver died in 1963.  These two college boys earned their patent in 1949.  It took awhile for the thing to catch on, but now it’s yet another techno-thingy we can’t live without.

--Soon, babies will be given barcodes at birth along with their social security number.  Then they’ll have those microchips embedded under their skin and their DNA will be taken into the national data base.  You think you have no privacy now, just wait.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012