One of Hannah's friends appeared one day with a gift. We were relatively early in the phases of Plant Madness. Still in the honeymoon phase, where it seemed sweet and fun and not overwhelming at all.
Our flat was completely covered in plants, each in a slightly different state of death spiral. Rubber plants, spider plants, vines, creepers, herbs and flowers. Little ceramic pots lined the window sills. Every plant had a name. I knew most of them, but Hannah had a running catalogue in her head. Not names like “Monstera” or “Ficus elastica” – more like “Drew” and “Jonathan”, two matching plants we’d named after the eerie twin presenters of reality TV nightmare Property Brothers.
We’d had a candle phase beforehand, which was still very much in play, but now the candles sat alongside plants. And to be honest I was a bit hesitant to light candles too close by, in case the plants caught alight and burned us to death. I think a lot about that kind of thing.
Anyway, as I was saying, Hannah's friend showed up one day. Can't remember her name. Han has so many friends. But anyway, this nice woman drove up in front of our building, and she had something for us. She got out, but her husband stayed inside the car. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t met either of them before. As I recall they were moving to Ireland, so needed to get rid of some things before leaving town. We were happy to oblige.
This woman had in her hands a small plant pot, with a strange bit of vegetation inside. Perfect gift for Hannah, really. A new plant – any plant – was sure to spark joy in her. What is it Marie Kondo said? “Look around your home, and remove everything that doesn’t spark joy – then replace it with plants.” Something like that.
Though I didn’t pay it much attention at the time, that woman did seem awfully keen to get rid of this plant. And maybe I imagined it, but thinking back I may have heard an audible sigh of relief after she’d handed it over and got back in the car.
So we said thank you to these people, and headed back upstairs with our new plant-friend.
On closer inspection, the plant was unlike anything I’d seen before. A green sphere, roughly the size of an onion, with a small shoot poking out of the top. It didn’t exactly have roots. Just a little green ball immersed in dirt.
It was kind of cute, really.
No human names seemed appropriate for this one. So in the end we went with, simply, “the onion”. Sometimes “the onion thing”.
Maybe if we’d given it a nicer name, it wouldn’t have turned on us so quickly.
We placed it by the window, next to my computer, gave it a little water, and waited to see what would happen.
Over the next weeks and months, it started to grow. The green sphere, the “onion” part, stayed roughly the same size. But as time passed, the little shoot at the top began to elongate and crawl up the window. What had been a tiny pointed nub became a long tentacle.
Sometimes out of the corner of my eye, as I sat typing up an email, just on the left periphery of my vision I’d see it move. Of course, it was probably just a breeze. That’s what you get when you put something by a window. Especially wooden-framed Glasgow windows, which seem purposefully designed to rot and let the cold air through.
But even when motionless, this onion thing with its green tentacle lunging upwards – to me it looked like it was climbing up the window, straining for escape.
Eventually it stopped being cute, and we started finding it creepy. Like an intruder in our home. At least when we’d had that pigeon living on the outside windowsill for a month (Esme, we named her), she made noises. So we could basically understand her intentions. “Feed me, mother!” whistled the pigeon in a feeble, shrieking coo.
Hannah had phoned the Bird Control lady, who came over, scooped up Esme in her arms and took her off to be rehabilitated (or, I suspect, die).
But the onion didn’t make any sounds. It didn’t move, at least when we were looking. It just kept growing up and up, reaching for the sky. Reaching – or so it appeared – up towards the handle of the window, to open it and topple out into the air. Maybe it longed to plunge down from the window of our second-storey flat, out towards freedom, or death.
The onion didn’t seem to like me any more than I liked it.
We stopped watering it, but it wouldn't die.
It just kept growing and growing.
The tentacle grew to at least a metre long, crawling up the window towards the sun. Longer than my arm.
Then something unexpected happened.
It started to breed.
Digging through the soil in the pot one day, Hannah called me over to take a look. Underneath the onion we found smaller green spheres, about the size of olives. Somehow it had managed to reproduce. This was bizarre to me. I thought plants would just dry up and die without water – but not this one. No, the onion was thriving to spite us.
So we took it outside, to the grassy part next to the bins in the back court. We said farewell and left it there.
And that was that - or so we thought.
Sometimes when I’d take the bin out, I’d stop by the onion and see how it was doing. We’d have a brief reunion: me, leaning over to get a good look, and the onion, being an onion, just sitting there, silently taunting me.
Outdoors it was getting some level of moisture and sunshine. Even in Glasgow, the sun comes out sometimes. So while not exactly thriving, the onion looked very much not dead yet. Not sure if it was my imagination, but it seemed a bit healthier. Plump, even.
After the winter, the green onion’s long tentacle did dry up and drop off. This now resembled the discarded skin of a snake, curled up on the grass next to the onion’s plant pot. But even after this, the main sphere seemed to be doing OK. Maybe the tentacle had fulfilled its purpose – if it had, after all, been trying to climb up the window and make its way outside. In freaking us out so much that we had little choice but to carry the onion outside ourselves, it does seem like it got what it wanted.
The onion had the last laugh. Not that I’ve ever heard what an onion laughing sounds like. I bet it’s not pretty.