Fluffy Ain't So Fluffy

Sophomore year in college Karen and I bought plants at Kroger because they were on sale. She purchased a broad-leafed yellow-green pathos-like plant and I got a bushy ivy-like plant and a small, unlabeled mysteriously fluffy little one. We bought them at the self-checkout and I tried to use up my excess change but the machine was full of quarters. Frustrated at how long I took to pay my bill in the smaller denominations Karen named her plant "Penny". And I named the unlabeled plant "Fluffy".

The ivy-like plant did not last long. Our deluxe Georgia Tech dorm accommodations that year ran to leaking windows and uncontrolled indoor climate. The powers that be had turned air conditioning on before spring break but turned heat back on while we were gone. Most of our plants didn't like being baked alive, without water, for a full week, but Penny and Fluffy survived.

I don't remember where Fluffy spent that summer, but the next year we found out he was a climbing plant. From the little ball of fluff he sent out long tendrils that we wound up our dorm wall nearly to the ceiling. He spent the next summer with Catherine and enjoyed the Georgia heat and humidity on her parents' porch.

The next summer was not as good. I left him with Karen because Karen had plants of her own. But with the plants of her own she didn't have room in her car for Fluffy at the time. So she decided to cut the entire plant off an inch from the ground.

And he came back! That year in the dorm he grew back from his shorn state and climbed again. He didn't like being shoved behind a couch but that was the way the furniture had to be arranged.

After that he got to travel across the country to California, and has been draped around my living room ever since, taped to the walls or strung with yarn across the window.

And somehow, sedate living was the worst thing to ever happen to him. For the past few months he's been turning brown and shedding like crazy. Fluffy-detritus gathered on the windowsills and in my sewing kit. I'd vacuum every once in a while, and fertilized him, but he confusingly kept both dying and sending out new sprouts.

So this weekend I took drastic measures.

I repotted him.

This probably sounds minor to other people with houseplants, but there's an important point I haven't mentioned about this plant.

Holy cow it's got thorns. Tons of freaking thorns. Thorns that can gouge huge holes in your bare flesh. As I know, from copious experience.

That's probably why it's been four or five years since he was repotted.

So this, the first completely free Saturday I've had in a long, long time, I sucked it up and did it.

I went to Osh to get more soil and a huge pot (to delay a repeat of this for as long as possible). Then I cut Fluffy out of the blinds, cut off a lot of brown parts, and then dragged him outside my front door so I could vacuum. I climbed over him to get outside and snagged my jeans up and down the legs on his thorns! Stupid thorns. I'm glad it was my third best set of jeans. So I went back inside to get one of my numerous pairs of Target $1 cotton gloves to wear while I repotted him. But those weren't enough, and now I have little cuts over all my knuckles. But I did it.

Now Fluffy is in a big giant pot, trailed again over the window, and it stings when I wash my hands. He looks a lot better at the moment because I cut off the brown, so it remains to be seen whether this will actually halt the death process.

In other news, I am very curious about the new Domino's pizza. It's a bold move for them to advertise that their previous pizza sucked and they've improved it. But since the fact is that their previous pizza really did suck, it might be worth seeing if they're right about the improvement part as well.