Do You Feel Like an Orchid?

I don't like it when people throw away orchids after they've bloomed. Other plants, I don't really care about. I'm plantist I guess. There's just something about seeing an orchid in the garbage, with its flat leathery leaves and exotic-looking stalks where the flowers had been, that seems tragic. A fern, yeah whatever; ivy, so what. Those feel disposable, like feral species. But an orchid feels rare, delicate, woundable (that's not a word, I know). It suffers in the garbage, as if it's slowly bleeding out from a broken heart. It worked so hard to produce those blooms, and then when it couldn't hold on to them anymore and had to let them drop, it was punished by being thrown in the trash. That's awful.

Anyway, I saved this orchid from being thrown away a few months ago, and took it on as my ward. I've been tending it all winter, and in return it put out a new leaf and a little bit of a bud on its stalk. I don't know if it's going to bloom again. They say taking care of an orchid isn't all that tough, but then there is a whole long list of things to watch out for. I'm probably not doing something right enough. I've been wondering if it could be that it has too much light. But then I thought that maybe it doesn't have enough. Maybe it's being over-watered; or it's too dry. Too much fertilizer; too little. Excess airflow; too stagnant. Too hot; too cold. Is it stunted? Maybe it's stunted. Did I stunt it? I don't know.

Sometimes I feel like that orchid.