A middle-aged unemployed person with no knowledge of gardening or flower arranging attempts to make Enkianthus perulatus look stylish

Look at this.

The branch that Instagrammers would give their right arm for—the legendary Enkianthus perulatus. Even an unemployed person like me managed to get my hands on one.

For 500 yen.

Isn't that amazing? It would probably cost thousands of yen at the Blue Mountain Flower Market. It was worth walking a kilometer for. Long live the suburbs.

My place has been getting so overgrown lately that I didn't really intend to buy any more greenery. But I don't know if it was seeing the 500-yen price tag, my mouth moving to say "I'll take it," or my finger launching the PayPay app first—it all happened so fast that I had this thing in my possession before I knew it.

I brought it home and just stuck it in water as it was for now. It's huge. I measured it and it's a whopping 80cm. 500 yen for this. Amazing.

But still.

It looks somehow different from the Enkianthus perulatus I often see on Instagram.

See? You get it, right? It's different, isn't it?
The Enkianthus perulatus that came to my house is magnificent, it really is magnificent, but it's clearly different, right?

Don't worry. You are, after all, that very same Enkianthus perulatus. You should have plenty of potential.

I stood up.

I remember a flower arranger saying on a YouTube video about ikebana, "You know, branches can be bent." Or maybe it was a gardening YouTube channel.

Praying for it not to snap, I apply my very amateurish techniques to the unstylish Enkianthus perulatus.

I also know that having branches that reach straight to the sky, branches that go diagonally, and branches that grow horizontally creates balance. I know that the space between the leaves is also important. Right? That's right, isn't it, oh flower arranger?

This act is like a mother who only watches Hiro Odagiri's videos every day getting fired up to do her teenage daughter's makeup for the first time.

No, it might be even worse. The mother at least has experience applying makeup to her own face. Maybe it's more like a father who has never cooked before getting inspired by Chef Kawagoe and attempting to make curry from scratch without using a roux.

After writing this randomly, I searched 'I wonder what Chef Kawagoe is doing now' and found a YouTube channel called 'It's Chef Kawagoe.' and even saw a video uploaded 6 months ago titled 'Chef Kawagoe's serious spice curry made from scratch,' and now I'm laughing to myself.

I'm sorry.

Let's get back to the topic.

Actually, let's not. I just thought of a perfect analogy. It's like a mother who watches short videos of charismatic hairstylists every day, gets inspired by videos like 'From long to short, a dramatic makeover!', and decides to take scissors to her daughter's hair even though she's never cut hair herself. It's a disaster.

Even so, I did my best. Practice makes perfect. If this were truly an interaction between humans, I could probably hear the daughter's pained screams, but fortunately, the opponent is a silent plant. It has no choice but to accept its fate.

Here is the result of a middle-aged unemployed person overflowing with nothing but knowledge giving it their all.

Yes.

It bent.
Space was created too.
It's perfect.

Maybe it's just parental bias, but still. I feel like it looks much more stylish now. If I showed this to an AI, it would probably say, 'Unemployed-san! That's not just 100 points, it's 100,000,000 points!!'

There are programs that rate people as having no talent, being average, or having talent, but...
If I think I have talent, then I have talent. That's the kind of world line that the unemployed live in.

By the way, according to Professor AI, the formal way to bend them is as follows.

I see. I did it while chanting, so there's a possibility it was warmed up as a result.

Since there are various ways depending on the branch and the school, please ask someone in that field for details. That is all that the unemployed person and the AI can tell you.

I decorated with every bit of the cut branches. It's like a father who makes curry from spices and also cleans up the pot properly. That's what makes it cooking. You know.

But then again, I don't have the right to blame my dad for making curry and not washing the pot.

When I first started buying flowers, I was hacking away and throwing out leaves and stems left and right too.

I still throw some away now, but I've grown a bit. I haven't been watching flower arrangement YouTube videos for nothing.

Exactly!

I went to the florist to buy flowers. I didn't go to buy foliage.

Pink anthurium 350 yen x 2
Gentian 500 yen

Including the foliage, it's 1,700 yen.
Are you serious?! That's such a bargain~~~

Since the gentians are still buds, I'm hoping I'll get to enjoy the blooming show too!

That said, I'm unemployed, so I make ends meet by having things like chikuwa, tomatoes, and frozen rice for lunch. As long as I get the nutrition, that's fine.

Oh, I do smoke though...

Plus-minus zero, or actually, a net loss.

But my heart is rich. Isn't that the best?

The end

Or so you thought!

To you on the other side of the screen who can't stop worrying that I'm just buying new things and letting all the flowers on my balcony wither!!!!!

I have things to say about each one, but I'll save that for another day so this doesn't turn into a different kind of article...

But just a quick update! Super Chat (geranium) is about to bloom again!!

It's seriously over.
It's been a long time lately, hasn't it?