Abandoned Beauties

She was absolutely beautiful, in my opinion, but very few people would think so. She sat in a puddle of water, squished in between brittle brown ivy sprigs and the barren branches of a lifeless jade. She had flung a few pale pink flowers up from her central crown. They were ruffled and shaded to a darker hue along the edges. Most of her flowers had shriveled weeks ago and stuck to the dust-clogged fur of her leaves or hung over her pot’s sides like abandoned parachutes. African Violets do not have a scent. Their petals have an iridescence which, in nature, attracts moths by moonlight. Her blossoms caught and held the light from the overhead neon sign flashing ‘Special Sale’.

Her solidly clumped crown of leaves were symmetrical, but she had also stretched out long, spindly, off-kilter leaves which had been bent and bitten, ripped and rummaged through, until she looked like a battered refugee. I picked her up and held her in my hands as stagnant water dripped through my fingers. She had been snatched from her nursery, packaged and transported across the country to this store where an overly zealous clerk had shoveled too many fertilizer pellets beneath her leaves and submerged her into icy water and left her there to die.

But she had spunk. “I’m not dead yet,” she shined. All she needed was someone who understood; someone like me. So I took her home.

I put her in my brass planter on my kitchen windowsill. She spent a week there in solitary confinement, quarantined from the rest of my plants. No bugs emerged from her pot. No viruses slimed across her leaves. Her soil dried out and her whole body firmed itself in response.

My kitchen is a quiet place, filled with warmth and good smells. I sing as I cook and clean. But I am not there very often. The new plant was visited regularly by Moonbeam, my mostly Siamese, who shared the sunshine with her. Occasionally Daisy, my yellow lab, would put her nose on the straggly leaves, and then go on to kiss Moonbeam in the same way. Mostly, I left her alone. She was safe and dry and content.

I let her take a week to get to know us. Thursday evening, I knew it was time for more. I brought her to the kitchen table and set her down among a bag of potting soil, a clean African Violet pot, two small one inch slip pots, a jar of marbles, a glass of warm water, a saucer of rooting hormone powder, a box of plastic bags, a lint brush, and a pair of snips. Daisy pressed herself between my thigh and the table legs and Moonbeam patted at my hands from her favorite placemat on the table.

“Hello, beautiful!” As I spoke to her, I gently plucked the dead flowers out and threw them away. “I hope you’ve rested well. I’m going to clean you up and give you a new pot.”

I took the lint brush and rolled it across every leaf from the base to the tip, removing dust, dirt, and crusted fertilizer. “You have a few leaves that I’m going to cut away. They got crushed and I’m afraid the wounds might get infected. Most of them have healed, because you’re such a strong, brave plant. But they need to be cut away.” I took my snips and placed them as close to her base as I could. “Just a pinch.” I took the four amputations and set them aside.

Daisy whined and put her chin on the tabletop.

“She’s OK, see?” I held the pot close to Daisy’s nose. She snuffled and wagged her tail.

“Now, let’s get you out of this plastic pot and take a look at you.”

I crumbled away half of her dirt and held her up to the light. Even with the mangled leaves removed, she was still lop-sided. Her central mass was breath-takingly symmetrical, but a few larger leaves thrust themselves out at odd angles. These were perfect for my needs.

“I’m going to take these two leaves from you. But don’t worry. They are going to start new plants.” I snipped the two leaves close to her crown and put them on the table.

I had her new home all ready. The inner pot with its ruffled edge and porous walls was thinly covered with a layer of fresh potting soil. I firmly pressed her into the pot and sprinkled a handful of the store-bought soil around her. I set her on the table and went to the sink to fill the brightly glazed underpot with warm water. Moonbeam rubbed her face into the soft furry leaves, purring contentedly. I placed her pot inside the underpot and walked with her to my front hallway. I had a place reserved for her beside my other flowering African Violets lining the shelves along the walls.

“This is your new home,” I told her. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I returned to the kitchen and quickly filled the two slip pots with five glass marbles and a handful of bagged soil. The first leaf’s stem was too long, so I snipped it to one inch from the blade. The extra stem went into the pile of mangled leaves. I swiftly plunged the leaf into the glass of warm water and swirled it around. I dipped the cut stem into the saucer of rooting hormone. The white powder clung to the wound like miniscule cotton-candy. I pressed it into the slip pot all the way to the base of its blade. I repeated the process with the second leaf.

“Now, my darling little slips, here’s some warm water to tide you over on your journey.” I poured slowly until the soil was moist. “Here are your sleeping bags!” I popped each pot into a plastic bag and zipped it closed. I wrote today’s date on the bags and walked with them to the front hallway.

I have a special shelf against the wall near the front window for leaf cuttings. The tiny slip pots fit just exactly into the metal rings of my many pyramid-shaped fruit stands. They get light, but not directly, and they are not disturbed by drafts.

There was one last duty. I returned to the kitchen where Daisy and Moonbeam had kept vigil over the pile of mangled stems and leaves I had excised from the original plant.

Moonbeam had already rubbed fur into them and Daisy was nosing through the excess dirt. I filled the discarded pot two-thirds full with the dirt. I picked up each piece of plant and laid them all on top of the dirt.

“You’ve seen the worst of life. Beaten, bedraggled, smooshed. But you are still beautiful!”

I sprinkled the remaining rooting powder on top of them, then I covered them with a handful of soil. “You sleep here for a while.”

I put the pot in a large plastic bag and poured the remaining warm water around the surface. “When you wake up, you’ll have grown new babies.”

The original African Violet will bloom again after a month of sunshine and light fertilizer.

The bags cocooning the leaf cuttings can be opened in six weeks and be removed completely five weeks later. After four more weeks, the new plants will be mature enough to be repotted and will begin blooming.

It is the pot filled with the debris that I love the best. They may lay dormant for months, or they may spring up right away. But they will come forth!

Their new plants will be hardier than the original. They will be more compact than the plants arising from the slips.

When they are large enough to divide into individual pots, their roots will be difficult to tease apart from the other plants they have emerged with; a solid mass of white tangles, desperately clinging to a familiar environment. They will take a while to fill out their new pots, tentatively unsure that they are in a permanent place. They will take at least two years to bloom. But when they bloom, they will rival all the store-bought beauties around them!

Moonbeam and Daisy paraded behind me as I carried this final pot to its resting place on the shelf below the front window. I think Daisy and Moonbeam understand. Moonbeam and her brother Midnight were the only survivors of a litter of ten. Daisy was rescued by the ASPCA when she was four weeks old. Like my African Violets, they are the wild things tossed aside and abandoned by the civilized world. They are the wild things that, when given the chance, arise from devastation and shine in the darkness. And when they bloom, they are incomparable!