Sedum - Multiplication
Something is different in the succulent wing today. There are plants where there weren't plants before -- tiny green sprouts erupting from the gravel between pots, from the cracks in the bench, from a patch of soil that spilled last week and nobody cleaned up. Little rosettes no bigger than your pinky nail, clusters of jelly-bean leaves pushing up from nothing.
Theo is on his knees with a hand broom, sweeping fallen leaves into a dustpan. He looks up and grins. It's the first time you've seen him actually grin.
"The sedums got out," he says.
He stands and brushes off his knees. On the shelf behind him sits the source -- a sedum in a terracotta pot, its stems heavy with plump, bean-shaped leaves in shades of green, pink, and dusty blue. Some of the stems droop over the edge of the pot. Beneath it, on the shelf surface, you can see a dozen tiny plants that have rooted themselves from leaves that dropped.
"Watch this," Theo says. He touches one of the stems and a leaf falls off. Just like that -- barely a nudge and the leaf releases, landing on the bench with a soft tick. "Most plants, that's damage. That leaf is dead. Gone." He picks it up and sets it on a patch of damp soil. "Give it two weeks."
He points to the baby plants around the mother. "Every single one of these started as a dropped leaf. Fell off the stem, landed on something vaguely moist, and decided to become a whole new plant. No roots, no stem, no help. Just a leaf on the ground that chose to begin again."
You look at the trail of tiny sedums spreading across the shelf, into the next pot, down the side of the bench. An invasion of small green beginnings.
"People hold on to everything," Theo says. He brushes another leaf loose. It falls. "Every piece of themselves, every idea, every version of how things should be. Grip, grip, grip." He watches the leaf settle on the soil. "The sedum just lets go. And every piece it releases becomes something new. It's the most abundant plant in this greenhouse and its entire strategy is dropping parts of itself."
He looks at you.
"Abundance comes from letting go," he says. "Not from holding tighter."
Sedum Succulent - Multiplication
Fior Fiore Plant Shop
$0.99
Abundance comes from letting go.