Therapy Plant?

I have begun talking to plants. A plant.

It all started when I read a news story about plants reacting to anaesthesia just like humans, by entering a sleep-like state, and then coming out of it. This couldn't help but evoke the question of pain and whether plants feel it, etc. And by extension, a lot of other things, like life being on a spectrum.

Also, our friends Marj and Tom, who stayed in our apartment while we were in France last fall, were worried that my husband's pet orchid was not responding well, indeed languishing for lack of hearing him playing the flute playing in the mornings before he went to work. Marj began to cheer the orchid up with recorded music. And the orchid was in splendid condition when we returned, even making new flower buds, only now starting to open.

Marj left us a little lime tree (well, sprout), which, since I've been tending it, has started dropping its leaves: over-watering? under-watering? lack of sun (we face north)? Or do I need to talk to it? Sing to it? Touch it?

All of the above.

In the morning I stroke a leaf or two and cluck over a yellowing leaf. If no one's listening I may sing a bar or two of a romantic Italian aria I learned in singing school a couple of summers ago.

You know, it's a lot less work than an animal pet or a bird.  I think I could start to see it as a companion, as my therapy plant.