Plant Metaphor III

Continuing another topic that readers have expressed little to no interest in, let’s revisit the topic of the plants in my office. I have posted on this topic twice before. The action-oriented summaries of those posts are as follows:

“Plant Metaphor”
I refused to throw an Easter lily away after it had died, because I know they’re perennials. It has grown back under my care, and is now a huge monster.

“Plant Metaphor Update”
The lily became so large that it toppled over due to the force of its own weight. I propped it up against the window to avoid this becoming a recurring problem.

[Author’s Note: I’m setting myself up to be questioned on this topic. Most people do not think Easter lilies can grow to be as tall as people. If you feel the urge to question me on this one, please go to my Facebook profile and search through the pictures of my office. There is at least one picture of the thing in there – from about six months ago.]

Now that everyone has been reminded of my freakish efforts in botany, let’s continue with the latest developments surrounding this fascinating potted plant.

There are none. It’s still getting taller, but it’s still leaning on things. That’s it.

The fun comes in because of how unrecognizable it has become.

Recently, I had two visitors come to my office in the same week. This is far from unusual, but generally the small talk I get as an engineer seems chosen for its ability to put congress to sleep. And congress can listen to ANYTHING.

The first visitor was the building procurement rep, whose cubicle is right outside my office. She and I talk all the time, but it’s pretty rare that she comes and actually visits me IN my office. It must have been a casual moment in the administration area though, because there she was.

Early on in the conversation, she casually declared, “That tree is getting huge!” while looking out the window over my shoulder. This confused me, because outside of my window there is, in the following order: shrubbery, lawn, a blacktop roadway, A/C and building utilities for the Packaging III building, the Packaging III building. Note the absence of trees. I turned to try to figure out what she was talking about. Still no trees.

Clever readers long ago figured out where I am going with this. Humor me though, because at the time, I did not have a half page of context clues to help me out. I had to resort to some grilling, in which I discovered that, sure enough, my Easter lily was being mistaken for a tree.

Here’s why this is funny. She thought it was a palm tree. She asked me if I thought I could get it to grow fruit. She had visions of little coconuts dangling beneath the fronds. My efforts to explain that it was an Easter lily were largely rebuffed, due to the fact that is was so clearly a tree.

A few days later, a very similar conversation occurred with another coworker.

So here I am, again kicking the dead horse of an unpopular metaphor that I ironically refuse to let die. (By my count, that makes it a zombie equine lily, or perhaps just a Jesus lily, which is basically what it is anyway.)

I figure this third effort to make a metaphor out of the plant will be as follows. Everyone is waiting expectantly for an Easter Lily to bear fruit. Maybe I can get it to turn some water into wine while its at it.

The world is funny like that.