We can’t change the past, but we can change a Canelé

Humbly bragging about a Prayer Plant + some thoughts on sugar and a cake recipe

I come from a family of plant growers, green thumbs all around, except for me. And yet, I want so badly to effortlessly have plants in corners, in hallways, hanging above me; a nonchalant sense of lushness that surrounds me. Hard to successfully enable that environment when plants shudder in your terror house of killer jealous cats, willfully withering at your need to help them thrive.

This was all true until this past year. I decided to try my hand at a Prayer Plant, aptly named for leaves that “dance” in darkness, rise up like prayer hands. They are pet friendly, and resilient. For the past three months, I’ve not only kept the plant alive, but it is growing, everyday, dancing in the dark, leaves falling amongst themselves in the daytime, recharging from all night clubbing and growing. 

I think there is a correlation to how I’ve reimagined my fraught relationship with plants. I used to care for my plants like I was some investor in their small business, to hover and water and cajole them into growth, only to watch them die in protest to my unwanted capitalistic ways. Instead I decided I would: 

1. Ignore everyone’s advice and try to listen to the plant itself. 

2. Ignore my own bad intuition, and once again, let the plant dictate its existence. 

And sure enough, the Prayer Plant took to this new method immediately. Sure, leaves were bitten every night by a hostile cat, but newer leaves were waiting in the morning. After a significant amount of growth, this plant did something I didn’t even know it was capable of. It started to flower, and in my excitement, I wanted to look up on the internet for more validation and confirmation of its peak health. 

In my search,  there was a general consensus that a flowering Prayer Plant was a “bad” Prayer Plant. Apparently, each flower takes so much work and energy on behalf of the plant that it is our job to trim and cut away this expression so as to encourage more green leaf production. 

At first, I thought about my lack of experience and about following this direction. And then I asked myself; why is it my job to regulate this plant? Moreover, why don’t we trust plants to decide how they wish to spend their hard earned photosynthesis? Why do we need more leaves? Could this be some form of emotive behavior from the plant? Could the plant be happy to exist and wanted to take some time to find the right expression to say so? 

So I did nothing, and the Prayer Plant, once bloomed, went back to the very important task of producing new leaves. There is now an erratic schedule the plant holds of flowering when there seems to be reason to specifically emote and get back to new leaves as it deems so. 

In the past weeks, my downright neglect has been rewarded with peak lushness. The message that resonates with me is: in spite of my presence, my plant has found happiness in our shared space. 

I think about sugar production more than I should. Of course I do, why else would I share a deranged story about me, (Big Leaf), vs. my anti-colonial plant?