Thank You, Rory Newbrough

It started with just one plant. A tiny Aloe Hawthoria called to me from the garden racks at the Home Depot. Honestly, it was kind of a joke a first. Love Is Blind had just aired on Netflix and an emotionally intelligent brunette by the name of Rory Newbrough gave great advice to hopeful men in the pods…yet we never got to see him find love? It felt fishy, but I have trust issues which is why I could never be on a show like that. Still, I was convinced he was a house plant. Placed in the pod to help the stereotypical slightly more reserved gender open up. I needed to open up too, I needed a Rory Newbrough in my life; So, I put the aloe Hawthoria into my cart and called him by the name of my new favorite reality TV star.

I had Rory for about a month, I gave him ample light and watered him appropriately. Then the pandemic hit. I worked a little bit longer in the office than my friends and family, the company I worked for tried to make the best decisions for their people before shuttering their doors. I’d taken this job about 9 months before, unsure if I liked it or if it just paid the bills. But when they closed, they took care of me and I didn’t care if I liked it anymore, I was just grateful.

I still got to work from home, but there was little to do outside of the office, so I had to find other ways to keep myself entertained. I lived close to the building, so when it came time to check on the office, I was the perfect volunteer. The purpose was to make sure that the building hadn’t been broken into and walkthrough to make sure we didn’t leave behind any rotting tuna sandwiches that might attract pests. On one of these visits, I walked through the office and saw one of my co-workers left behind a Dracena Marginata.

I don’t know who this plant belonged to, somebody obviously watered it, but now it was just an afterthought left behind in a dark room. Maybe I’m overly empathetic or maybe this was the first time my isolation started to kick in, but I couldn’t just leave the plant there. It never got real light in our office as it was, with us gone for who knows how long, the artificial lights barely keeping it alive were gone too. I scooped it up and carried it out to my car on the way out. I was its mother now.

I repot the Dracena, the yogurt tub-like nursery pot it lived in clearly no longer did the job. It slipped off to reveal dried root-bound dirt when I changed it over, the raw roots looking almost pornographic with how perfectly they had formed in the shape of the container. I then placed it next to Rory and my daily routine of boiling the kettle for tea and checking the soil of my plants became part of my life.

Now, I imagine that you and your friends and your friends’ friends and so on, all suddenly had an infinite amount of time on your hands, as did I. I would put my 40-hour workweek into Animal Crossing, became acquainted with the birds in my yard, and got really into drinking daytime whiskey. If you’re wondering, “Hey! What’s daytime whiskey?” Well, it’s a super easy recipe; get your favorite tumbler, two ice cubes, and your desired amount of whiskey (I recommend Spice Box Rye Whiskey with Dark Chocolate but really, it’s up to your specific pallet which brand you choose.) And drink that whiskey during the day while thinking about the paralyzing realities of your life. I lived this same day, over and over again and my only highlight was when Rory or the Dracena needed a drink too. Unfortunately, being tropical plants, neither were that thirsty and they didn’t have as much of a need for me as I did for them.

I’m not stupid, I figured out the math pretty quickly. If I had more plants, then I could spend more time watering them. I also discovered something else, Garden Centers were considered essential. I could slap on a mask, park in front of Little Tree Garden Center, follow the taped arrows on the ground, and get more plants. For weeks I’d take the Starbucks money that I had saved that week and buy myself a new friend. Carefully writing down their care instructions and watering schedule in a journal that I had to wait 3 weeks to arrive from Amazon. I did not name one of my plants Jeffrey Bezos after that.

I found myself searching for new and exciting types of plants- the collection of different types feeding deeply in my childhood obsession with Pokémon. These were just super boring Pokémon that I had to take care and I loved it, I loved to feel needed.

Air plants, the plant brought to earth by space aliens I am sure of it, were and still are my favorite, they have no dirt, and that fact is so nonsensical to me that there was no comparison. Then I got my bird of paradise and my Wandering Dude… which is around the time I told my mom what I had been up to.

I hadn’t seen my mom in a month, from what I remember she didn’t have a knack for gardening but an old family friend who had passed many years ago had given her a clipping of a Hoya which now climbed majestically across the A-frame windows in her kitchen. I dropped off some groceries for her, but it was just an excuse to see her from a distance, and to my surprise, I was rewarded with a fresh clipping from that Hoya. I hadn’t discovered propagation yet, but the thought of having a third-generation heirloom plant thrilled me and I set out to find Reddit instructions on how to make it grow. The bar in my home that housed boxed wine and my whiskey decanter was then littered with shot glasses filled with water and rooting hormone. Why buy plants? When I could bootleg them from other plants?

At this point I was lonely; I don’t mind spending time by myself, but I had never experienced this level of isolation before. I used my hyper fixation with plants to alleviate that. I posted my new interest on social media and made new friends through groups of shared interests. I was also able to reconnect with old friends whom I had grown further apart from thanks to my corporate life than I would have liked.

The city that I lived in even had a pop-up community for anonymously gifting plants to each other. I immediately joined, got a stranger’s name and address, carefully selected plants, and some paraphernalia for them and set out for the opposite side of the city. Other than going to the store and dropping off groceries this was probably only the second or third time I’d left my house in months. I parked my getaway vehicle around the corner, and I sneaked through other people’s driveways and bushes to drop off the package on this person’s doorstep. I knocked and ran down the road like an exhilarated child playing nicky-nicky-nine-doors on Halloween.

I continued to buy plants until the day I returned to work, by the time we went back to the office I had over 30 indoor plants and had moved on to planting vegetables out in the yard. As life returned to the new normal, and my routine became hectic again, I thought my love of my plants would disappear much like the other hobbies I’ve collected in my lifetime. However, over a year later and I still appreciate the new interest that I developed. I put on my kettle, and I walk the rooms in my house to check on the well-being of my plants before I leave for work. I could have withered away during the pandemic, with no metaphorical light or water to keep me going, but I made it through because of the green leaves and flowers that brought me simple joy. For that, I need to say, “Thank you, Rory Newbrough.”