How can a poinsettia be unhappy, you say? Let me tell you this sorry tale. It began Easter 2018 when I donated two Easter lilies for the altar at church. They were returned to me after the holiday. That is the usual procedure.
I sat the lilies, still with blooms, on a bookcase below a southern exposure window in my office at the back of my house. I watered them from time to time during that summer. By fall, the leaves had fallen and the stalk was dead. I stopped watering them, but they remained at the window. I cut off their stalks.
At Christmas time, my daughter Anne bought me a red poinsettia plant at the grocery story. That's the best place to buy them, you know. They are cheaper there. This was a compact little poinsettia with several branches and blossoms. There was a little tag with watering instructions. I faithfully follow them, placing this Christmas beauty between the two dormant lilies on the bookcase.
Sometime in February, I decided to begin watering the lilies again. Soon buds appeared in the moist soil. I decided to allow them to develop. Anne said I should pull out all but one stalk in each pot. Maybe so, instead I decided to give everyone a chance. All through the spring the lily stalks grew and grew. I kept waiting for buds to appear, but none did. Those stalks eventually reached the top of the upper window.
Something had to be done. Anne's solution was to throw them out. After all, they hadn't bloomed again. All the while the little poinsettia plant between them flourished. It didn't drop its red bracts like they usually do. A couple tiny new branches did appear on one stalk. That was the only change. They were as pretty is if yesterday was Christmas.
In June, I cut off the stalks of the lilies. Anne planted the bulbs in my flower garden. That left the sweet little poinsettia all alone on the top of the bookcase in front of my office window. I watered it, but not too much. Everything was fine for about a week. Then the green leaves begin drying up and falling, one by one. This continued with the red bracts until it was just a wilted, pathetic ghost of a plant. Even the two new shoots drooped.
I didn't over-water it. I didn't move it from its cherished position. The only change was that its guardian lilies were gone. I believe my sweet little poinsettia died of a broken heart. Its friends had moved on. It was all alone.
Years ago a Catholic nun at a teacher training class said she believed even plants have souls. That if you step on a blade of grass and bruise it, the plant feels it and suffers. I don't follow that line of thought, except to wonder if my poinsettia did die a lonely death of a broken heart, missing its guardian lilies. What do you think?