The Greenhouse

I didn't know what it was to remind me The flowers had become more beautiful, of at first. It was made of wood, like many not grotesque at all anymore, I noticed as buildings. As I passed by, the door was open, we entered. My friend seemed quite at home and I looked in. The shape of the building, and convinced me that I had to stay longer considered with what I saw inside, reminded if I wanted to smell the paper flowers as me of a greenhouse. Only why should it they really were. It wasn't long until I had be made of wood? Something strange, and become used to the odor of the flowers. I odd here. A greenhouse is glass, easy to see convinced myself that it was a lovely exotic through. But still, there were the oddest smell, whether it was or not. It pleased me looking flowers, exotic in a grotesque sort to smell the flowers then, and I realized that of way I thought. They had no odor, and I even on my first contact with the greenhouse thought it was a shame really that such pretty and its contents that I was a part of it, and flowers had no smell. They became lovelier it a part of me. The foul smell that had to look at the longer I stared; as if in a come from the first flower upon that first trance. The flowers seemed to reach out and contact was sweet to me now. And I had try to hold me close to them, in a kind of thought at one time that I could never bear comradeship. Trying to excite my imaginato smell that odor again! tion. It made me restless and uneasy, and yes, afraid. My curiosity overcame my fear however, and I touched one. IT WAS PAPER, and I found to my amazement that it reeked with a foul smell, once I touched it. I left at once, puzzled, confused and bewildered. I vowed I'd never walk into the greenhouse again.

I met a friend who happened to mention the greenhouse. He asked me if I had ever noticed it. I told him of my unpleasant experience there. He explained more about the greenhouse to me. Not all of it, but enough to make me curious enough to break my vow and go there again with his guidance. I was surprised as we approached! The building was glass this time, as a greenhouse should be. I knew more about it now, perhaps that's why it was glass. I was looking at it a bit differently.

I am happy now, and know contentment. This wasn't so before I entered the greenhouse. I know that as long as I never leave the greenhouse, I shall continue to know that contentment. But, should I ever try to leave the greenhouse for good, it will be to no avail, and I shall only have to return. And if I stay away for any length of time I shall have to return not as an Orchid as I am now considered to be by many of the other flowers because of my youth, but as a ragweed. There are many ragweeds among us now. Ones that have left us, only to return at last, and others that have stayed here always, as I must, turning one day with age to a ragweed myself. That is my only regret, my only fear. The fear of age and of knowing that I too, will be a ragweed no longer looked upon by the beautiful flowers, but only by the other ragweeds.

-G. Stanley Hayden

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