plant

My female owner learnt a lesson about herself yesterday, through an innocuous discussion she had with some of her new friends regarding her plant. You see, she bought a green leafy indoor potted plant when she moved into her current apartment. She wanted to spice up her otherwise barren looking room. As she has no experience looking after plants (she spends all her energy on us!), her host gave her until mid April before the plant dies under her care.

The plant when she first bought it
This is the plant as of today (one month later)
A close-up shot

If you compare the "before" and "after" photos, you would notice that the plant looks barren now as many of the bigger leaves are now gone and some of the remaining leaves have spots of brown. (although there are also some baby leaves which sprouted out miraculously.) What happened was that my female owner would pluck away any leaf which had brown spots because she thought that i) the leaf was diseased (some green finger lady told her to remove the entire leaf if random brown spots appears) or ii) the leaf was withering and would die anyway.

Finally, she got tired to plucking away the leaves and decided to let the plant die a natural death. It was at this point when she sought the advice of her friends (as they seemed to be knowledgeable about plants). Upon hearing the above story, they unaminously told her not to pluck away any of the leaves and to allow the drying leaves to die naturally. Expressing her discomfort at the yellowing leaves, one of them asked "why can't some of the leaves be brown? they are also brown in the natural environment"

It was then that my female owner realised her obsession with perfection, that if any part of the plant did not fit her schema of a thriving plant, she would remove that part (by the way, her response to the comment went something along the lines of "but the leaves were all green when I bought it from the shop!"). It's akin to the times when she did manicure herself. If there is ever one slight blemish in the polish (which is probably naked to the all human eyes except hers, she would remove the paint and start all over again).

Anyway, besides the quick lesson on plants, my female owner realised that she has to re-evaluate her mindset towards certain things (especially those which cause her distress) and consider taking on more reasonable perspectives if possible.

Time to plant new ideas into her life!