Someone gave me the most beautiful orchid I’ve ever owned at the end of May.

I’ve owned orchids before but they’ve never lasted very long.

I think the key is I listen to what other people tell me to do; someone says I always give my orchid a shot of Benadryl before bed every night, someone sings to theirs but only 80’s hits, someone reads Fifty Shades while sitting under a police interrogation lamp.

I see orchids at restaurants getting bumped, knocked around, touched by hundreds of patrons, dipped into koi ponds and they are all still there, thriving and happy the next time I come back.

Sometimes after mine dies, I still keep it around the house thinking it will come back like our apple tree that didn’t appear to be the kind that could bear fruit and then Bam! Seven apples this summer.

We wasted no time killing the apple tree (for real this time) once we knew it wasn’t already dead, by listening to people who told us we should spray a whole slew of chemicals all over the leaves, branches and roots. I can’t remember what they said this would do but what it actually did was turned everything a rust colour until it disintegrated into a small pile of dehydrated fruit. Not the kind you would enjoy as a yummy snack. The deadly kind, jacked up on poison.

My orchid was healthy and growing until I stopped my weekly watering and started giving it  ice cubes. I only had to do this once and the next morning it had gone from a beautiful, flowering, perfect plant to a shivering, bitter, angry, shriveled, unrecognizable as an orchid, used tissue impersonator.

I thought plants were supposed to make us happy?