Cutting Back to Move Forward
By Jen Aryes
On my kitchen windowsill is one of my grandmother’s orchids. I brought it home after she passed away earlier this year as it wasn’t faring so well without her particular care and attention - I understood how it felt. Although I’m still a newbie gardener and have zero experience with orchids, it started to revive and I felt the joy of her presence again.
Bypassing my normal learning approach - hitting the internet hard - I felt that if I loved this plant as much as I loved my grandmother, all would be well. And it was… until the day I realised I’d neglected to properly train the stem. About to flower, I knew the weight would be too much for it to bear. With a long exhale, I gently tried to clip the stem into a weight-bearing position and… it snapped. I felt bereft.
This time I dove into the internet and the advice was clear: cut the stem at the base. Yet, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it, to be set so far back from it flowering again. I made the cut just under the break and hoped this little orchid would defy the odds.
It didn’t.
Very soon it started to rot, top down and I had to cut at the base otherwise I’d kill the whole plant. Even then I still left an inch, I couldn’t quite let it go completely. The old stem base hardened and a few weeks ago, a brand new stem started to emerge. It’s growing fast and will have a much stricter training regime this time!
During Keishin (intensive online Zen training) last month, Ginny reminded us of the power of nature to guide us. My orchid is a daily reminder to look at what I’m holding onto that needs to be released. Where are we trying to keep something going when, if we’re honest, we know we’re misplacing our time, energy and hopes. Imagine what we could achieve if our efforts were planted in a different patch of earth.
As we move into winter, I certainly have a tendency to hunker down, shut the door on my backyard and wait for the warmer weather. Instead, this year I shall be heading out into the cold and damp and preparing my garden for a more prosperous 2022.
Jen Ayres first attended a Zen Leadership program in 2018, which had an immediate and major impact on her life during a very difficult time. She’s (slowly) breathing into Zen practice, gradually understanding just how beneficial this practice is and sharing her journey with all of us.
