Vat is dat smell?

Let me just start off by saying this post is exactly why I keep my blog private! If you have young children using my blog for "travel homework" (that's a joke!) you may want to censor this one. If you have never had the chance to meet our Russian housekeeper, Lillia, she is a TRIP and soooo much nicer to me after we gave her a Christmas bonus this year! She is very attractive, has had some enhancement surgery, and wears stretch pants and high heels to work in the garden. She has a very strong accent but curses in English (I was going to say like my Dad) like a sailor!
SO today, I was on my way out the door, and she whispered to me, "Jew wan to know whaz been going on round here?" My curiousity is peeked...What Lillia? "For muns I bean coming tru dis lobby saying to myself, Sheet, Vat is dat smell? It smell unbelievable - like mildew all dee time." I know! I admit I have even hidden a room deodorizer under the heating unit. Then she tells me, and I can't keep doing the accent but you get the idea, she has been watering the silk orchid I put out in the lobby for months! She said that she felt the roots and the leaves and they felt real, and she knows not to touch the blooms or they will fall off. The styrofoam under the ground cover has been soaking up the water and when she picked it up it weighed about 20 pounds. She said, "Jew might tink I am stupeedist Russian you ever know but all my friends and peoples in dis building say I am best damn gardener because I can grow dis bootiful orchid and eet never loose eets blooms!" And all this time I was thinking my aristocratic neighbors were probably thinking "I just kaaan't believe that American woman would put an arti-fiss-ial plant in the lobby." We have had a good laugh over this!
AND....
I think I've had a break-through in my relationship with Lillia!