This pretty orchid greeted me in the sunroom this morning.

My old childhood friend and neighbor from back in the day literally plucked this from the trash at the retirement community where his mom lived. He and his mom had a little ritual they followed every day. In the late afternoon, he would wheel her around to all the utility closets looking for soda cans to donate to their church’s can drive, stopping along the way to say hi to other residents, check the mail, and just get out and about a bit.

On one of their trips, he found an orchid that had been tossed in the trash. Tossed in the trash! Like stale bread or a half-eaten jelly donut!

He has a good eye for plants so he plucked this orchird out of the trash, took it back to her apartment, cleaned off its roots—maybe they had some sticky stuff on them from a jelly donut tossed with the plant—repotted it and watched as it grew a new flower stem.

That’s when I came into the picture, accepting his gift of all the houseplants when he moved back out of state in January.  (Remember The Great Responsibility, which by the way is still blooming nicely.)

I didn’t do much more for the orchid other than water it occasionally and carefully, because it is in a container with no drainage, and then watch as the flower buds grew bigger and fatter.

My reward for that little effort is this orchid bloom which reminds us to never give up. Even if you’ve been tossed in the trash, never give up. Someone might just come along, pick you up, wash you off, and put you in some new potting soil.

Especially if you are a plant.

Which is part of my little spring pep talk.

Don’t give up.

I’ll finish the pep talk in another post in a few days because I have some profound advice that needs its own post which it would have had today but the orchid bloomed!

Reminder! I’ll be at the Johnson County Public Library Local Author Fair on Saturday, March 23 with all my books, including The Christmas Cottontail. We’ll be at the Clark Pleasant branch, 530 Tracy Rd., Ste 250, New Whiteland, Indiana from 10 am to 1 pm.    Free gardening advice with every book purchase!