back to life

I love gardening and I spend a lot of my spare time visiting garden centres, pottering around my garden and generally trying to make room for the plants I feel compelled to buy on a very regular basis.

While I’m very successful in the great outdoors and the garden is blooming, especially with all the rain we’ve had recently in the UK, anyone who knows me knows that the fate of any house plant is another story. Unfortunately they either die of thirst or they suffer the torture of water boarding and eventually drown.

So imagine my horror when a poor innocent orchid came into the house as a mother’s day present, as I unwrapped the beautiful specimen I feared for it’s life. My first move was to put it in the bathroom, there it would have a chance of survival in the steamy atmosphere. Then on one of my many visits to a garden centre I spotted orchid compost, I didn’t know such a thing existed as I had never before entertained the notion that I could keep an orchid alive long enough to repot it. It’s been a long winter and spring since the last original flower dropped, the stalks looked barren but reassuringly the leaves looked very healthy so I was cautiously optimistic that the plant was still showing signs of life.

Then the miracle happened, a few weeks ago I noticed two buds on one of the stalks and just last week they opened and revealed the most beautiful flowers. I don’t mind saying that I am quite proud of my effort and eventual success, But I’m not going to get carried away and fill the house with other house plants, I believe that would be a step too far.

One of the good things about working in the community was chatting to the patients about their gardens. During my time in the Rapid Response Team, to prevent hospital admissions I visited quite a few patients to administer intravenous antibiotics. Most of these drugs were infused over 30 – 60 minutes so there was plenty of time to talk all things plants. One particular chap had a lovely garden and had the most pretty snapdragons amongst the array of beautiful plants. When I returned the following day he had very kindly bunched up a few cuttings for me to take away. They bloomed happily for quite a while in a pot by the back door until, presumably, they died off.

Or so I thought! This spring I noticed something green springing from the back door step. As the season moved on the little crop grew rapidly until it was obvious that the snap dragons had not died off at all. They had apparently taken steroids, taken root in the concrete and erupted into these massive beautiful blooms.

Nature really is miraculous.