Plant Metaphor

[Originally Posted 4/24/07]
About 13 months ago, my building manager gave me an Easter lily when I returned from a bereavement leave. It was a very nice gesture, and the plant was very pretty. I put it on the windowsill of my office, and I believe it can be seen in its original form in the office pictures I have posted elsewhere.

The lily eventually died, of course, as such plants are expected to do. But I had seen this coming and took the required steps to pollinate the plant before it went. I calmly went about my business as the original plant grew brown leaf by leaf. Eventually, I chopped it down entirely and left the pot of dirt I was now caring for in the window.

I have continued to manage the empty pot of dirt now for 13 months. It is no longer empty. Where the one former, simple stalk once stood, there are now four behemoth stalks, coiling wildly and continuing to grow rapidly. Each individually is about twice as tall as the original stalk that I used to create them.

I am beginning to wonder if they will eventually try to eat me.

This seems pretty typical of how projects I manage usually turn out. The lily has attracted the attention of the green-thumbed types around the building, and a few from other buildings. They all point out that many people who do not routinely grow plants would not have expected anything nice to grow out of the pot of dirt at all. Many of them additionally point out that lilies are rarely expected to be taller than the gardeners managing them. But that just sounds pessimistic to me. I’ll just continue to assume that the plants are immortal and care for them as such until proven otherwise. That’s how I usually manage projects like this. It works pretty well.