my bedside flowers p2

That little pot of flowers from Mother's Day grew until it could not grow anymore. In fact, it had a longer lifespan compared to the tou miau.

When I first took it home and transferred it to a proper pot, it almost wilted and I got worried it might just die altogether. I guess the other grrls didn't fancy them as much as I did, for theirs died a premature death, but they were kind enough to donate the soil to mine. I was only too happy to accept because my flowers were surviving on that little clump of soil with very little nutrients.

Soon within about 3 weeks, the number of flowers doubled to almost 25.

The colours were vibrant and a great sign of the spring weather outside. I would always look forward to waking up and opening my window to enjoy the flowers. It was during those days when I was still trying to figure out if i should stay on in Japan or go back to Malaysia that these flowers gave me motivation to try harder. I would wake up thanking Him for another day to be alive and healthy and enjoy His tremendous blessings.

I had seen these flowers many times on my way back home, usually in planters on gates outside homes and offices. They come in cheery colours of bright yellow, orange, purple and white. I think I was the only one who grew them like this outside my window.

Due to the space constraint, and possibly the direction of the sun, it had no choice but to branch out in various directions. I tried to rotate the pot to even out the distribution of sunlight and to prevent the flowers from growing in one direction. Close to 2 months later, instead of growing upwards, the plant had ended up looking like this.

Not bad eh? My first and only pot of flowers (in Tokyo, that is) have indeed grown! It became like a little game to count the flowers and to guess which bud would bloom first.

It became apparent that I had to start pruning the plant, or else, it would look really unruly. There was really no more space to which it could grow anymore.

In fact, when I tried to bring it in from the balcony it became so difficult that some flowers dropped off in the midst of the untangling. This was just before I left for Europe and I had to ask the landlord to take care of the plants for me.

Looking at that picture, it does look kinda wild that it grew like that! After 2 weeks+, I came back to a very different plant. I didn't even take a picture of it, it was so sad to look at. It was not the landlord's fault, but it had been kept indoors without direct sunlight and was close to wilting completely.

Aishah did try to revive it when she came back from Finland, just a few days before us. On my last day in Tokyo, just before getting into the landlord's van, I looked up to the balcony and saw a lone stalk with 7 purple flowers in a row left in that pot, slightly bending downwards like a Japanese bow. How ikebana-ish.