The Breath of Life

Do you remember the special souvenir plant from NYC? The one I bought at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens? Well I got home from work Monday to see it looking like this:

Oh the pain and heartache I felt! I wracked my brain trying to figure out what could have happened. Did I over-water it? Did I cook something too close to it and get some deadly chemical on it (if that's the case, it is a good thing Curt and I didn't wake up looking like that!)? Was it the vase of fresh flowers next to it that gently sprinkled it with death???

Then it hit me: Curt and I both like to sleep cold. In the middle of the night Curt got up to open more windows, and the temperatures dropped well below freezing Sunday night in Denver. I didn't notice the little plant at 2:30am when I left for work...and Curt closed the windows before he left...but the frigid hours of the night were just too much for our poor little plant.

I panicked. How could I save it??? My first reaction was to warm it up. I got the blow dryer and literally gave it the breath of light. It was a modern-day-miracle! Hours later the plant was nice, plump and happy again (see photo below). Too bad I didn't do a time lapse movie of it. That would have been awesome. The next evening we opened the windows I was sure to relocate our little plant to the back of the apartment where it was safe and warm.

And yes, that is a box of Chocolate Chex in the background, the best cereal in the world. It was on sale this week :)