Lavender
Or: So You're the Victim of a Brushing Scam. Now What?
by deliriously...daniel
February XX
Oh, I believe in fate. Big time. Since I was young, I've felt a relieving sort of magnetism, pulling me toward people, opportunities and decisions. Every time I give myself up to this force, things turn out okay or better—even if it takes a while to get there.
My dad explained it this way: "A sailor focused on horizons must throw caution to the wind."
Example: I was walking back to campus, and a cyclist's sharp braking cut my daydream short. Snapping back to reality, I noticed a rental listing stapled to a telephone pole. Fate had clearly brought me to it, and the well lived-in house pictured was beautiful. I'd been searching without success for months, and here were four modest flats, furnished and priced for the type of student who needs to live off campus this spring but can't afford any modern downtown apartment complexes.
The coolest part? The whole place is covered thick with ivy—and I've killed enough houseplants to prune my green thumb into a raisin. Fate likes to talk in symbols, and it was saying this place could teach me independence: how to nurture myself like a plant. I had to call.
March X
Signing the lease was a cinch, but I honestly felt bad. Turns out my new landlady is renting out the place for her mother, who was getting too old to live alone in such a big house.
Skittish about the house but grateful for the money—which would fund a new guest room for Mother— my landlady told me about the ivy. It was planted way back when her mother's parents bought the place. Now it's an ecosystem, a scaly second skin that can weather winters with limbs laced tight enough to hide the house's paint color. She said it's a deep maroonish violet, but I can't see through the shadowed green murk.
The ivy has swallowed the upstairs windows, too, so unit #3 and my #4 share a sizable skylight to compensate. The bath and bedroom are pretty dim, but from 9a.m. to 5p.m., the living room is a hardwood paradise. All it needs is two sunbathing cats to complete the scene. Or at least, two pots of cat grass.
April I
Do I like this place? I'm living in my muse! Sure, it has some quirky old house things—the central air conditioning either creaks or reeks, and you have to close three separate doors for true bathroom privacy.
Plus, the beige walls and permanent cherub art give the unit big grandma energy. But I've been working on it—thrifting colorful furniture and draping tapestries over the most dated decor.
It's all worth it. nothing compares to feeling the ivy's living embrace all around. Like I'm in a treehouse, or a forest cottage reclaimed by nature. This feeling is fate's vine, tugging me toward my calling here: cultivation.
To parent a brood of houseplants as I grow into adulthood feels like perfect symbolism—as long as we all get enough water and sunshine, everything will be a-okay. Or better.
I've got a pothos growing above the TV, a snake plant poised on a glass-top stand, a pretty legit monstera I got off Facebook Marketplace flanking the dinner table, succulents in the bathroom, spices in the kitchenette and an English ivy from my uncle's greenhouse creeping behind the couch and up toward the skylight. In their own weird feng shui type of way, these plants are extensions of me—a breathing constellation of my chakras. I will keep them alive or die trying.
May I
Since my internship started, my plant posse has been getting eight hours of uninterrupted sunlight. I've adjusted to their quirks, moving the monstera closer to the couch and giving the pothos a fair deal more water. They're thriving—we're thriving, like a well-fertilized machine.
Each morning, I take a picture of my plants, so every week, I can flip through and watch my kids grow. But when can a brood be considered complete?
Although I feel capable, I hesitate to get more plants. I've been waiting until the moment feels right, catching myself idly hoping for serendipitous gifts from coworkers I've shown those 'family photos' to.
I know my dad would think hoping's a waste of brain power. A new plant would come to me at its own pace.
June IX
I'm not proud to admit it, but I've been using Amazon to pick up odds and ends. On an unpaid intern's budget, stuff like plant hooks, clothes hangers and toothbrush heads just aren't worth the retail markup.
So it's never surprising to see an Amazon package in the house's mail nook addressed to me, even if I don't remember what I ordered. This latest one, though, was remarkably light—couldn't be the desk fan I was pseudo-expecting.
I'm glad it wasn't.
A packet of seeds. About a dozen of them. The pouch was unmarked, save for a customs stamp identifying the package's Chinese origin. Was this a mistake? A prank? Just a glitch in the system? It felt like destiny again, but I've since learned I'm not the only one getting "Seedy Letters."
That's what the news article called them. With thousands of Amazon customers reporting unsolicited seed packets, it didn't take long before the culprits were connected to a wider trend: "brushing" scams. Overseas Amazon merchants harness vulnerable online retail data to order their own products from accounts like mine or any other dope's. Then they leave fake reviews, verified under our names, to gush about whatever seeds, lightbulbs, humidifier or bootleg Disney plush they sent to puzzled homeowners.
The idea of mysterious seeds from China kicked up a real scare amongst conservationists about invasive species. But when they tested the seeds, they were found to be the common likes of cabbage, morning glories, roses and rosemary.
So, I know, I know, the Department of Agriculture might disapprove, but I'm planting mine. Indoors, in its own pot, just in case things get funky. If it ends up being anything bigger than fresh mint, I can move it outside. It would be in good company, as my downstairs neighbors have populated the house's flowerbeds. This place's plant fever is contagious.
June X
I buried a few seeds in a planter my uncle sent. It was pale green, with grapes drawn around the mouth, and earned a place square in the middle of the coffee table—where the sun finds its zenith around noon. With no clue about the seeds' light and water preferences, I'll have to go for broke and dial back from there.
August XIV
After a few months, I've concluded that these seeds aren't an invasive species or anything sinister. Still, they must have been genetically modified in some uncanny valley to grow this much, this fast. It's lavender. Little purple pebbles line the seven sprigs. For a plant that can take two seasons to bloom, mine's budding too soon.
My other plants are doing as well as ever. Yet flipping through my daily photos, the lavender is a sore thumb sprouting up into a middle finger. Symbol of grace and elegance that it is, the lavender gulps down any water given to it with gusto, but never wilts, even after a couple days in bone-dry soil. I had planned to take time off and visit home for a weekend some time this summer, so this seems like the perfect chance to pluck a sprig and show my uncle.
August XVII
He said there's nothing botanically wrong with it, but that I'm probably losing track of days at my internship if I think lavender like this grew indoors so quickly. Even the pictures couldn't convince him.
Shows what he knows. I returned to find the lavender bigger than ever. I suspected it was growing exponentially more over time, but this thing went from one foot tall to nearly two in 72 hours. Sure, this is probably some backwards-ass, freak-not-of-nature GMO, but its auspicious symbolism isn't lost on me: fate recognized my poor plant parenting and swelled against it dramatically. I could win a state fair with these seeds!
August XVIII
Just like that, this new-plant novelty's faded to nausea. The lavender's height has not doubled, but tripled, and now the remaining sprigs brush against the skylight, above freakish lengths of blooming flower. Swaying in sync along the ambient breeze, the whole thing looks like some alien octopus, pulsating with menace and purple plasma. Its sprawling tendrils even knocked my English ivy off its hooks, as I'd awoken to it crumpled carelessly across and beneath the coffee table.
I tried restoring the ivy to its place, but it wasn't sitting right. Not like before. Its limbs lacked the same natural elasticity and instead fell limp, slipping from their hooks and back onto the floor—this time, into a neat coil instead of its typical meandering twists. The leaves, too, felt waxy and brittle, with several snapping off. My other plants' leaves likewise felt heavier, yet somehow more hollow, drooping under their own weight and reflecting light with an anemic gloss.
My lavender fantasy needs a dose of reality. Replanting it outside would raise eyebrows, but this apartment's left little room for it to grow. There's a soil conservation office just outside town, so when they open tomorrow, I'll have to bite the bullet and admit where I got the seeds. Then I can ask about whatever disease my ivy caught, too. If nothing else, maybe fate wants me to warn the world against mutant mail lavender.
For now, I'm moving the thing into my room. Far, far away from the skylight.
August XIX
I awoke to the most frightening sight imaginable.
A sunrise.
Each morning at this apartment, I've been nudged from sleep by whatever thin orange glow could seep through the ivy.
But now, the sun's ascent seared my eyes, as it peeked over a sharp orange peel of horizon.
Between heavy heart beats, I assessed the situation. Half the lavender sprigs had forced themselves into micro-fractures on the well-worn window. Their burly sinew bloomed in spiderwebs to crack and shatter the pane from within, while the remaining lavender seized the chance to escape the house altogether, dragging the planter along with it.
I didn't want to see the worst that I expected.
But I looked out anyway.
There it was: a century of majestic, wizened ivy turned flaccid, returned so gracelessly to the earth like a snaggle of downed power lines.
How can I explain this to my landlady, let alone her mother? What about my neighbors' plants? What the hell is this lavender, really? And most of all, why me? Why, why me?
I bit down on my thumb until I broke skin, but I was interrupted by an unfamiliar sound. An awful, slowed-out retch of a sound.
It was a monster gnawing through cartilage. It was a spine wrung out by blistered hands. It was the lavender, growing so fast you could hear its fibers stretching into ligaments. I had to move.
~~~
Outside, the lavender moved with purpose. From the shattered ceramics where it landed, the plant crossed the lawn as a dolphin or a sewing needle would, stitching up and down through the grass and toward the road. Its sprigs intertwined into one, thick vine. Purple flowers scattered in pools, shucked by the lavender's sinusoidal motion in and out of the earth.
At my touch, the heaped ivy sloughed off several plasticky leaves. Not good. I grabbed a trowel a neighbor had left in the flowerbed, also losing life, and stabbed it deep where the lavender had fell. It was as if I'd tried cutting a cake full of snakes. A tangled root mass wrapped itself around the trowel and tugged it away from my hands.
Roots.
I had a suspicion.
The lavender paused, seeming confused about how to cross the road. This was my chance.
Rushing back upstairs, I pulled my English Ivy from its pot without resistance. It no longer had roots, just a plastic bulb where its base should be. The lavender had stolen them, swallowed them, and turned my once lively ivy completely artificial. With the house ivy's roots beneath it, too, the lavender was feeding itself with decades of stored nutrients.
I started the kettle, grabbed what I could from the bathroom and sprinted back outside. Chasing the lavender's growth path wasn't hard: where it had been, astroturf spread outward into a synthetic blemish.
Popping a cap and flicking a Bic, I hair-sprayed a desperate flame at the lavender's head. Catching fire, it snarled back at me. It blackened, shedding layers of ash with a teapot's boiling squeal. In a last ditch attempt at survival, the lavender sent roots up to constrict my legs, while its remaining flowers opened wide to vomit seeds and half-digested plant matter toward the road.
My neighbors were up and out now, yelling at me with hands full of fake hydrangeas.
But I wasn't finished. I ripped open a canteen I'd strapped around my neck and poured boiling water over the lavender's exposed roots. Legs blistering, my screams were drowned out by the lavender's own death cry. Its roots went slack around my ankles. I sprung for the charred plant's head and dealt the killing blow: a full canister of epsom salt, to bury the root crown and smother the thing once and for all.
I stumbled to my feet, deeply burned but victorious. The screeching lavender had left my ears ringing and my clamoring neighbors muffled in the distance, until one voice broke through the hysteria:
"Hey asshole: you're letting birds in the house, too!"
~~~
It was true: my bedroom window was still broken. Stumbling back through walls of questions about ivy, flowers and fire, I knew my priority was to call the conservation office. I still had seeds left, and they needed to be studied. Or destroyed.
Yet fate, funny fucker that it is, had other ideas.
Where I'd left the seed packet on my dinner table, a lone magpie gorged itself. With a yelp, I threw my empty canteen at it. The thing was faster, squawking, rushing me and soaring out the door. I tried to grab it, but its tail feathers slipped through my fingers. Bouncing off the stairwell walls, the magpie found its way out the door, between the legs of neighbors returning to grill me.
Through my cracked bedroom window, I watched the bird crest over the horizon. Riding the wind toward places to shit, fertilize and reforest.
Other birds pecked at the lavender's puke.
Now I have to make a tough call. A few of them, really.
August XX
The conservation office laughed. They'd heard about the crazy who killed an heirloom ivy and set fire to his rental property's lawn.
So I'm still here, planting new flowers for my neighbors while awaiting my own inevitable eviction. My landlady's family must still be mourning.
She was wrong, by the way. The house isn't violet. Not any more. It's turned a sickly shade of lilac, the pale underbelly of a bug without its exoskeleton.
Should she take me to court, I pray the record above speaks for itself. I will warn anyone reading, though: if you get seeds in the mail, don't plant them. And should you hear something in the woods, stretching toward you to be born, run.
I wish I had, the moment I got that package. Instead, I'll be here waiting. For any measure of magnetism to pull my life back together. To make things okay again. Or better.