Today it appears I’m an Accidental Druid and part-time Plant God.
This morning, in a fit of what I can only describe as botanical lunacy, I took a rose cutting and rammed it into a banana. Not for storage. Not for snack garnish. But as a womb. A vessel. A pulpy, potassium-rich cradle for what I am now calling – prematurely, but with great conviction – Rosana.
Yes. I have created a creature. Or at least, I’ve planted the idea of one, quite literally, in fruit.
It felt… momentous. Mad, but momentous. There was something deliciously sacrilegious about it. Like grafting Shakespeare onto The Beano. Or baptising a budgie in Irn-Bru. But still I did it, with trembling hands and an expression not dissimilar to Victor Frankenstein when he first thought, “Right, let’s nick a few body parts and see what happens.”
In fairness, this all began with some half-remembered video – one of those modern horticultural myths where someone in Ohio claims they grew a whole azalea bush from a teabag and a whisper of optimism. Apparently, bananas contain rooting hormones. So do I, arguably, but nobody’s tried to grow a clematis from my elbow.
So I sliced open the banana – just a slit, nothing brutal – and inserted the rose cutting with the tenderness of a nervous midwife on her first shift. There was something disturbingly intimate about it. The act felt part science, part crime. Like I should’ve had gloves on and plausible deniability.
I then buried the whole unholy union in a pot of compost and muttered something that may have been a blessing or a threat. Time will tell.
And now? Now I wait. Like some mad Victorian experimenter staring into the murky tank where he’s dropped his latest amphibian hybrid. It’s been roughly five hours and twenty-two minutes, and Rosana has not yet bloomed, spoken, or started humming Debussy. This is disappointing, but not wholly unexpected.
I’ve already begun making lists – ‘Things Rosana Might Become.’ Top of the list:
A rose. A banana that thinks it’s a rose. A sentient plant that outgrows its pot and eventually sues me for identity fraud.
Friends have warned me. They say, “It’ll rot,” or “That’s not how plants work,” or “Please stop texting me photos of this.” But I am undeterred. For every scientist mocked in their time, there is a banana in soil, waiting to prove them wrong.
And yes, I admit it’s all a bit daft. But then again, so is life. So is love. So is deliberately growing a rose in a decomposing fruit. Hope, I think, is always a little idiotic. But I like that. I like idiotic hope. It’s charming. It’s human. It’s how we got to the moon and accidentally invented spray cheese.
So here’s to Rosana, my little horticultural monstrosity. May she take root. May she bloom defiantly. And may she, at the very least, not attract wasps.
If this works, I’ll be unbearable. If it doesn’t, I’ll simply blame the banana and try again with a mango.
Wording 
Wait a second, I thought you ALREADY were unbearable? 😉
So my mother used to tell me!🤣
😀