Mara and the Prayer Plant

The house we moved in has some very nice skylights. It's so nice to almost always be in natural light. One of the skylights is in the ceiling of the guest bathroom, and I wanted to make use of it by getting a little bathroom plant.

There's lots of decorative plants that are suitable for such an environment, but I kept crossing them off because they were either too common, or I just didn't like the look. The casual search took about a week till I found it.

The prayer plant. It's so cool, it folds it's leaves at night like little hands in prayer and opens them back up in the morning, hence the name.

I couldn't find it locally, so I ordered it online. As you would guess, that's not easy on a plant. It arrived dried up in the most pitiful of states. Yet I trimmed it, watered it and cared for it till it made an awesome recovery. I even managed to split it into two pots and they're both happily thriving, even though one is still in the original tiny planter.

So this plant is a survivor.

Enter Mara.

For anyone who has met her after month 3, it shouldn't be a surprise to say that she is a grabber.

She loves to touch things with her hands, and take them, and swap them from one hand to the other (she started doing that around Christmas time).

She loves grabbing things so much that when she sees something interesting she goes through an array of cute frantic gestures.

First, she makes a little pouty face with lips poking out like a ducky. To better display her carefully mounted stack of bubbles she's been working on.

She lifts her head high, as if to look down upon the object of her desire. She's not haughty, she's just cautiously eyeing it like a bird of prey.
Then she stretches her hands and arches as far as she can, tensely wiggling them toward the target. There's eyebrow twitching, head slightly shaking with excitement, and an intense look in her eyes.

You cannot miss it, and there's no question abut what she's going to do to it if she gets it:
Shreds! Banging! Gumming! Crushing! Pretty much everything but gentleness.
That's normal for an excited 4 month old.

Now, you can imagine my surprise when I took her one morning to the bathroom on our daily house inspection, when I also water the plants. She saw the prayer plant, and her face lit up in the brightest of smiles, like it was the very first time she saw how pretty that plant was!

She looked up at me in the mirror and smiled warmly, as if in gratitude for my bringing her here to enjoy this. Mommy always shows her so many beautiful things!

She leaned carefully forward to see better. I helped her out and sat her on the sink in front of it.

Another smile. Another look at mommy seeking encouragement. Then she twisted from her waist leaning to the left, till she was almost horizontal. Kinda like a curious friendly puppy when it looks at you sideways.

It was such a sweet face!

She reached out slowly with her right hand, fingers quivering in the expectation of touching the leaf. Like the gentlest of caresses.

Then BAM!!!

Dirt everywhere, two leaves in her mouth, the rest held tightly by the left hand as far as possible as if to not interfere with the chewing. Pot was in the sink empty. Jammies were full of dirt and these little white pellets that I believe are nitrate fertilizer.

Mommy is desperately trying her well practiced cue: "Let go! Let go! This hand Mara, this one!".

She takes none of it. Munching away like a paper shredder, she's got this.

It takes about a minute to untangle the mess. It takes about five to put the plant back in a lame, sorrowful state. And about ten to fully comprehend what had just happened.

Well, that plant is a survivor.

Mara is a smart, maneuvering, lightning fast destruction machine. Better watch out...