Brown thumbs and whispered prayers...

My prayer plant has flowers that are blooming. Why is this significant, you ask?
Aside from the fact that it obviously doesn’t take much to get me excited, I have the brownest of brown thumbs. I can’t keep flowers alive for anything. I don’t like to weed mom’s garden because I will inevitably pull up flowers that I thought were weeds. I love African Violets, but I manage to kill every one I ever try and grow. I try not to even look at Mom’s violets. I think they know, I am bad news for flowers. My great grandmother grew the most gorgeous flowers. My grandmother always has the prettiest flower beds too. And mom can make African Violets bloom just by looking at them. Somehow the flower whisperer gene bypassed me.

But house plants…. that’s another story. Somehow, I have managed to inherit all the rejects here at the office. People keep bringing me their half-dead scraggly plants. I guess they figure they are so far gone, it can’t hurt to give them to me. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lights, maybe it’s the humidity in the office, maybe they just recognize a kindred cast-down spirit. But for whatever reason—they are growing. I’ve actually run out of room. My office looks more like a greenhouse than a cubicle. People are now running when I approach with a cutting or a plant. I’m running out of people to give them back to. I just wish that I could sneak a carnivorous plant, like a Venus flytrap, in the midst of my jungle that I could unleash on those unsuspecting fools that get on my nerves….

*snaps out of daydream*

Anyway… back to Melissa’s jungle. I like my plants… but they still aren’t flowers. They’re neat, but not a lot of color. Just a lot of green.
A friend gave me a cutting of a prayer plant about a year or so ago. I liked it because it has deep red veins running through the leaves, and the underside is also red. It breaks up all the green in my office. I rooted it in water for a while, and then when I thought the roots were long enough, I planted it. Three days later, the darn thing was half-dead. So I pulled it back out of the dirt, and stuck it back in the water, figuring it was too late, and I had just killed another one. It perked up. And stayed perked up. And started getting more leaves. So I left it for a few more weeks, and then tried to plant it again. And… it worked. And it’s been growing ever since.

Prayer plants are a neat little plant. They get their name because at the end of the day, the leaves roll themselves up, and point upwards…. like they are praying. Every once in awhile, the leaves will twitch too. Someone said it’s the angels whispering a prayer when they do that. I figure I can use all the prayers I can get…

Last week, I noticed that there were three spiky looking things shooting up from the middle of the plant. I almost cut them off, but decided the less contact I have with the plants, the better. So I left them alone. And to my surprise, the other day I looked and there are really pretty white and purple flowers blooming off of those spiky things. And now there are more spiky things shooting out of the stems. How cool! I didn’t know prayer plants bloomed. So being the geek that I am, I went to my very favorite website- Google- and looked up flowering prayer plants. And to my surprise, I have discovered that prayer plants can be rather temperamental, and aren’t the easiest of houseplants to maintain. According to Google, I am supposed to be mixing acidic soil in the pot every couple months, trimming the leaves in the months of March and February, giving it special food, making sure it maintains a constant air temperature, and keeping the soil and leaves moist. Several sites suggested keeping a bowl of water near the plant to provide humidity for the leaves to “keep it happy.” (I am SO glad I didn’t know all that before. I'd have killed it just trying to keep it alive.) The day I spend more time on a plant’s beauty routine than I do my own is the day when pigs fly. I'm lucky I manage to brush my hair and throw some mascara on in the mornings. It’s managed this long without all that, it’ll be okay. Maybe it just likes me.

But back to the flowers. Since it is such a temperamental plant (haha, like its owner I guess), it is very unusual for it to bloom without "perfect conditions". I guess they do in their native rainforests, and in greenhouses, but not often indoors.

Well I’ll be darned. The girl that has the power to wither African Violets with just a look has managed to coax flowers from a plant that is not supposed to bloom. Maybe that green thumb gene is lurking in there somewhere.

Whatever the reason, I don't care. That silly little plant with the flowers has just brightened my week. See? Told you it doesn't take much.

Maybe the little angels whispering among the leaves figured I could use some extra prayers these days.