It’s all about me.

Why, yes, it IS possible to get stupidly excited by a bunch of seeds. And super fun to leave a florist’s shop feeling smug.

Look at these! Do you know what they are?

I wandered into a local flower shop for the very first time and was SO EXCITED. Despite the fact that I know nothing about plants whatever, I have always been interested in them. So when I learned that there was a plant called “Honesty” I was thrilled. I thought I could grow it and give plants to anyone I thought might need a little extra honesty in their lives and wouldn’t that be delightfully passive aggressive? I am not usually very good at being passive aggressive, since I tend toward straight up aggressive, but that is hardly the point.

I ordered seeds and tried to nurture them into being. This was in the before times, when I was not yet aware that growing plants was not among my many skills.

In all fairness, they did sprout. I got very excited for about two days. Then the little sproutlings began to wither and die and I ended up with rows of what looked like decaying dental floss. It was a sad and tragic thing.

Now, 20 years later,  I STILL have never seen an honesty flower in person.

Which means that when I walked into the flower shop that day I squealed. Pigs and small children had nothing on me. “You have honesty seeds!” I basically screamed at the poor young clerk at the counter. Once she figured out that I wasn’t having some kind of an attack, she laughed and said she hadn’t known what they were called, she just loved them because they were so shiny and smooth. I bought three bunches with extreme glee which now have pride of place on my mantel.

Of course, more is always better, so a week later I went back to overindulge.

They weren’t there.

“Where are the honesty seeds?” I asked a different young clerk. Her bewilderment was complete, as she had never heard of them. There was much descriptions, hunting, and waving of hands in the air until the main florist (who was on the phone) was disturbed enough to pause her call to ask what on earth the problem was. Once the situation was explained, she informed us both that they were not honesty seeds, but were still there and had been moved to a different corner of the shop. She then returned to her phone call, unaware that she had left disillusionment behind. I had been SO SURE they were honesty seeds, and so excited by it, and I was wrong.

Since being ignorant about plants I haven’t painted yet is kinda my thing, being wrong usually doesn’t bother me. On this occasion it did, and I was properly subdued (and much easier to converse with) as I proceeded to purchase more of them anyway. I could hardly say I didn’t want them anymore just because my soul was crushed, could I?

Right before leaving the shop the main florist ended her call, and I asked what the plant was named, so I would know in the future. She said it was a Money plant.

Y’all, Honesty plants and Money plants are the same plant! It is also sometimes called the Silver Dollar plant. Because the seeds look like coins.

I knew that and she, the main florist and owner of the shop, did not.

I swear, people, I felt like I won the lottery!

I knew a thing! A plant thing!

I can’t verify for sure, but I do concede that it is possible I strutted out of the store on an endorphin high.

As I was feeling quite full of myself, I decided that the next in my “One with Nature” collection was going to be a self-portrait. Different flowers and things remind me of other people almost always. But the honesty seeds? Those are MINE.

I worked off a photo that is 17? Years old now? Which seems fitting since it was taken at about the same time I was creating my army of plant corpses. A friend took the photo and it is one of my favorites because of the eyes. My mother, myself, my daughter, and my nephew all have eyes the same shape, and that makes me smile.

It’s all about the eyes.

By the way, honesty plants have small, four-petaled flowers (that I have only ever seen on Google) and were once a medieval house plant.

So there.

In other news:

Practical Kindness is LIVE. Please go check it out if you haven’t already. It’s a fun little project. We started the month with a women running for office theme week, so there are videos from a lot of women “firsts” just sharing things that helped them when they ran, and here is a link to my first attempt at a podcast, Women Running for Office.

There are so many different ways we can help each other, but it can be hard to know what kinds of things to offer. By sharing the stories of how people have helped us, we gather examples of how to support the people in our lives. Let’s learn together and make the world a kinder place—one small action at a time. Videos can be viewed on social media platforms:
·        Tiktok
·        Facebook
·        Instagram

Please follow and/or share. And like posts with abandon. Algorithms mean that until you build up enough followers, it doesn’t show things to anyone even when they sign up, so I’d appreciate the boost. 🙂