When I first moved to Bonnyville back in March, the loneliness was crushing. Because I could not get a dog, I would wander the plant section of a local grocery store, looking for some sort of living companionship.
I found it in the shadows of the clearance shelf, a little twig of a plant with one and a half leaves and a handful of dried up branches. Not only was he on the clearance rack, he was marked down even more.
A dollar is a little bit to pay for companionship and to give a plant fallen on tough times a nice place to call home.
So I bought him, picked up some plant food and some dirt and a bigger pot, transplanted him, and hoped for the best.
I'm not a plant person, and a plant, I have learned, makes a worse replacement dog than the cats I had in university did.
Still, I bonded with the little guy, naming him Buckingham and declaring to my friends that it was a name to grow into, because he had a lot of growing to do.
He lost his damaged leaf soon after, but still had one that was pretty good and capable of sucking in sunlight and converting it to the energy he needed.
Soon, a little bud showed up, and then he had five new leaves, which were tiny and pale and delicate. Another bud sprouted on one of his other branches. I wasn't too worried when his full leaf fell off a while later.
Tragedy struck when a friend visited and left the blinds open. I had long ago learned that Buckingham's fragile new leaves were too new for direct sunlight.
His second bud was scorched, withering away within days.
I'm really bad at keeping plants alive. I bought him some friends so he'd have some vegetation companionship, but they all died within weeks. I stopped giving them names after the third one.
Anyway, the fact of the matter is, I returned from visiting my family last weekend to find a tragedy had occurred. Little Buckingham was fighting for his life.
I'm not sure what's going wrong, but I have my theories. He didn't get enough sunlight over the day and a half I was gone, or he was lonely and suffered a broken heart. Most likely, though, his little branch couldn't hold itself up anymore and has started to wilt.
His little leaves aren't going brown or anything, they're just sagging, drooping a little. Maybe it's the different sunlight levels because of the change in seasons. Maybe only having one tiny branch is not enough to sustain a little plant.
Either way, there aren't any veterinarians out there for plants. There is really nothing to be done, except feeding him a little plant food for strength and propping his weak branch with a little stick. I feel like I'm delaying the inevitable.
There is a chance he could pull through.
If he doesn't, I don't know what I'm going to do. Who will I talk to at night when I can't sleep?
I really need a dog. Or cable.
Or who knows, maybe I'll be so busy now that I'm editor of the Nouvelle that I won't have any time for sitting home alone talking to my sickly houseplant.
I can only hope.
