Soul Rain - Nature Man

Happy July everyone!
Here's the official flyer for my upcoming art sale. Thank you for your support and trust over these past two decades with your art, framing and installation needs. Here's to the next 20 years.
AN

The Miraculous Leopard Orchid

Following up on my last post, today our orchid blossomed. Against all odds, through two brutal Atlanta summers, through months of not being watered, it showed a sign a few weeks ago after 30 months of looking rather dilapidated and voila, it's blossomed and so beautifully too.

I'll try to keep this short, so bare with me.
Before my eclectic, funny, sexy and naughty aunt Brenda left our physical world for the celestial heights, she gave us this beautiful orchid in full bloom, I'm talking multiple flowers. This was Sept 2013, Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which would be her last, at least in a corporeal sense. Within 30 days, the blossoms began to fall off and as they did, Brenda weakened. When the last petal fell off, so too did did she, and it has been since October 2013 that this plant has truly endured the harshest of elements - but love and faith it got. I just knew I could not throw it away, even though my wife urged me at least 20 times to say is done, let it go. I just could not!

So after forgetting to give it water for about three months, when the spring of 2014 arrived, I placed it on top of my trash can outside, out of direct sunlight, but out there, ready to face the spiders, the bugs, the pollen, the rain and humidity. Just about anything, you name it, and it looked worse than ever before. I actually documented it by taking photographs to show just how badly it had deteriorated. A couple of big green leaves grew and died, and I continued to water it, probably once every two weeks. The stem completely rotted that I had to cut it off. It kind of resembled a piece of dried-up bamboo.

Summer came and went, in both 2014 and 2015 - still nothing. During the winters I kept it indoors, but that only led to more neglect. I could not part with it. Something inside me said persevere.

Interestingly, every Wednesday evening I would take it off the trash can and leave it in the garage, so that I could haul the rubbish to the top of my driveway for the garbage collectors. Then on Thursday afternoons, I would return the trash cans to their respective locations outside my garage, grab the orchid, still in its original pot, and place it back on top of the trash can.

Green leaves grew and died, and then those funny things that look like roots going into the ground from the base of the orchid, began to grow. I got so excited! I thought these were stems, so I angled them upwards and attached them to the orchid stick with a clamp, only to discover they never grew. Go figure, that is like taking a fish out of water, I had them growing the opposite way, instead of earthbound, heavenward. Strange but true, this is not a made up story. They weren't stems at all.

I just couldn't give up on it, no matter how sad it looked.

Then, in the middle of January 2016, I thought I was seeing things. A real stem started to grow, not upwards, but sideways, parallel to the ground. One inch, two inches, and the next thing, it's about 9 inches long. Just a few weeks ago I looked at it, hence my previous post, and a bulb of sorts was forming, and so the story goes. .....

But there's a little more to it. You see, Brenda loved her leopard print fashion, from her clothes to the staircase in her home, she had an affiliation to this incredible creature we call a leopard.

If you've made it this far, please do me a favor. Zoom in on the closeup pic and see what you see. Is it a leopard in a Tiger's dress? It's it my imagination that the shape you see strongly resembles a leopard? You'll see for yourself.

What I will say is that we should never give up. Just when we think enough is enough, that extra patience, that extra perseverance pays off. We can look at stories from all sorts of angles, and decipher what we must, but at the end of the day, the story you've just read is the absolute truth. It's about faith. It's about going the extra mile and believing that miracles are possible.

What's even more bazaar, not that I would expect anything less, is that two and a half years later, this orchid has sprung back to life, and magnificently so. We may never see another blossom, but this one blossoming orchid, this single bud, has once again sprung back to life.

Thank you G-d for showing us miracles each and every day, even when we doubt it heavenly possible.

In awe,

AN,
March 30th, 2016