LIFE-GIVING

Mark tells me that I am solar-powered.  On grey days I don’t generally accomplish much of anything.

Today started gloomily with cloudy residue from a thunderstorm last night.  Mark tells me that the thunder shook the house; all I remember from the times I was awake are a few blinding episodes of lightning.  I told him this morning that I wouldn’t get much done today, owing to the dampness and drear.  He laughed at me.

But today took an unexpected turn: the clouds began leaving mid-morning, and with them any excuses I had.  It might have been preferable to have more rain, as last night was our first in a long time, but I wasn’t sorry to see it go.  Even if the grass and my porch-plants are dying.

To be fair, some of that is my fault.  Aside from a brief lapse of memory sometime in July, I have regularly watered my two porch-plants, and they have rewarded me by spilling cheerfully and luxuriously out of their pots as they swing above the porch railing.  I was satisfied that my previous failings with potted plants were securely behind me – until yesterday, when came a jolt of remembering and a terrible sinking feeling.

I took a jug out last night to water two plants that could not have looked more dead.  I split the contents between them as usual, an ironic final gesture – because I knew with terrible certainty that it had been at least a full week since last they had been watered.  As I lay in bed I was making plans to dispose of them in the morning so as not to keep the reminders of a shirked duty on painful display.

Then came this uninspiring morning, and I forgot the plants.  And returning from the store as the sun emerged, I saw a miracle in front of the house.  Every leaf had been quite withered and brown, and yet there was green life sprouting from each of the pots.  I was as shocked as I had been previously discouraged.  Even in the wake of a week of neglect, new leaves had sprung up.

Today the sun is shining.  And so my plants and I are starting over.