The Secret of a Potted Plant.

    I believe most people use the words to describe themselves as traveling nomads, chameleons, or invisible immigrants. I found another great descriptive word to use: a potted plant. 

What is a potted plant?

A potted plant is different from most plants for the simple reason that it is in a pot. It isn't rooted in the ground. It moves its location if necessary. 

It moves from its seat by the window, 

to the warm outdoors,

to the shady porch,

to a friendly place by a post next to other plants.


 But that is just the outside life of a potted plant.

What is a Potted Plant?

Imagine a potted sunflower in a flower garden full of black-eyed-Susan's. You will probably see the sunflower sticking up comfortably (or uncomfortably) among the colorful array of flowers vastly different than its own thick, tall stem. It is a like traveling nomad moving from flower garden to flower garden. It still needs the sun and water as all the flowers in the garden. It still enjoys the bees and the ants that climb its leaves. The only difference is that it is not rooted in the ground, like the rest of the flowers. But that doesn't matter, because it can dig it roots all the way down to the bottom of the pot. Through the holes of the pot, it can have dig its way into the dirt of the ground joining the rest of the roots of its neighboring plants. It is a lot of work, but it is worth it. That is until winter comes and the pot is moved to a warmer location tearing its roots out of the ground.

or...

Imagine a potted geranium in a big garden of geraniums. You may see the pot but you may not. That would depend on how close you are to the geranium. In a big garden of geraniums, the potted geranium would blend in like it had lived in the garden all its life. Like an invisible immigrant unseen by most people, it melts into the crowd. Only when someone stumbles on its pot, do they realize that it is a potted plant. For the potted flower's roots have not yet mingled with the rest of the other flowers of the garden. It does not share the same history and stories of struggles and victories. It does not share all of the same soil nutrients or minerals as the rest of the flowers.

or...

Imagine a potted Easter lily in a garden of tiger lilies that has begun to cross pollinated with the tiger lilies. The Easter lily has a few features of the tiger lily but has kept some of its own original features. It may be slightly spotted but its petals are a little less curved. Its color may be a light orange, rather than the tiger lily's deep brilliant orange. Like that of a chameleon, the potted plant can take on some of the characteristics of the flowers around it. When it moves back to the garden full of Easter lilies, it will always keep a remnant of the tiger lily inside of it.

That is who I am:

    I am like a potted plant. I am not rooted in just one flower garden. I have been in many flower gardens. They have all been very different, and yet slightly similar. Each garden has the basic needs of sun, water, and nutrients. Living in different cultures I have see the differences and cross pollinated with those differences. I have also seen the similarities and try to feel at home by burrowing roots down past the holes in my pot. Yet at  the same time, it takes a long time before the roots will eventually break the pot apart and our history and stories are able to combined.

     I am like a traveling nomad that probably won't stay in the garden of Black-Eyed Susan's forever. I am like a cross pollinated lily/tiger lily in a field of lilies that doesn't know what it feels like to be grounded in one place for more than five years. I am like a potted plant whose roots have tried numerous times to burrow into the ground underneath it. Yet numerous times they have been pulled up and exposed the air outside. I am like invisible immigrant that melts in the crowd of lilies. But no one else knows that. The pot is often hidden in the leaves of the other plants around and unless you look closely

Very closely

That is when you can see the whole plant

The Potted Plant.


 

I like to find stories in unlikely places and connect them with unlikely subjects. Here are stories and analogies that I see as I travel around the world.

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