Plant Metaphor Update

Remember my post about the Easter lily that was on its way to becoming larger than my window?

This morning, I went up to it to water it and to “walk the plant.” (For people who never grow plants, most things that you grow in a pot by a window lean dramatically towards that window over time. The solution to this is to periodically rotate the pot to face a new direction.) The plant had grown so tall in relation to its pot that this time, it fell over onto me.

I believe this counts as satisfying my prediction that it would one day try to eat me.

I’ve returned the plant to its former position and leaned it against the window for support. This has solved the problem for now, and everything looks fine.

Unfortunately, my choice of words is now adding new depth to this topic. I chose to title the entry as being metaphorical, and I concluded by saying: “This seems pretty typical of how projects I manage usually turn out... Many [gardeners] 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.”

So now I see two tenable interpretations:

1) Real world data suggests that projects I manage eventually collapse under their own weight.
2) Real world data suggests that projects I manage eventually attain the capacity to assimilate and control new, larger worlds.

I’d better repot the thing, so that I can better argue for interpretation #2.