Week One, January 2008

RAIN TOWN LOWDOWN

A Plantlady’s Life in Geekatopia

Week One, January 2008

Morning Haiku:

Driving across the dark
bridge into an opening year -
trucks filled with yesterday.

Starbucks at 6:30 a.m. - One Microsofty sleeps in a brown velvet chair beside the fireplace, his laptop slipping toward the fake Oriental carpet. Blond Pointy-toes reaches across my tall Awake tea to grab the headlines while her latte steams. She does not see me here thinking into my Apple. I am invisible in plantlady uniform, blending into the furniture, observing the ebb and flow of those stoking up for a rainy trudge to their cramped cubicles at the end of the street.

The coffee shop is the first stop on my route, my route which is my ‘hood four days a week, ten hours a day - for over twenty years now! Initially, all those ages ago this job was intended to be a temporary gig until I found a real job but ... these things happen to us all, don’t they?

My route is the home of Microsoft, of Starbucks, of Amazon.com, and of Costco - and any number of hopeful smaller companies gearing up to be the next big success story. This is the busy land in which I ply my trade, watering and dusting and loving tropical plants five thousand miles from the nearest tropic shore. Here I shuttle between black buildings through pouring rain to tend the sad and lonely palms, water dripping off my hair onto pristine travertine floors.

Today’s Office Plant Care Tip: Remember that the plant next to your desk is not a “house plant”. It lives in a much more hostile environment - an environment your are not able to control as easily as that of your own home. Your office plant contends (as you do) with bad lighting and unforgiving heating/air-conditioning systems. Give the poor thing as much light as you possibly can at this dark time of year!

If you can’t have the overhead lights on while you are at work (because of monitor glare?), then turn them on when you leave work and let them stay on overnight (I’m serious). Your plant needs at least eight hours of light, twenty-four-seven to be healthy. Fluorescent lights are cheap to run but every life is a priceless gift! That plant is cleaning your air and adding precious humidity to your environment - you owe it some consideration - big-time.