Saturday Night

Drove home in the dark, though tonight it was punctuated by bolts of lightning.  This is not the lightning of Long Island or Chicago or Marin.  These are vertical, startlingly bright, tremendously long, bolts of light that illuminate the mountains and make midnight feel like late afternoon.  Sometimes there are more than one at a time, and the whole sky turns a milky white.

I would rather have been a passenger than the one responsible for staying calm as the night explodes.

Hadn't remembered to leave a light on and groped to find the alarm, whose bright green clock wasn't enough to encourage a speedy transit of the 5 steps from the door.  I dropped my hospital purse and the bright pink cooler on the kitchen counter and turned to the sink to wash my hands.

I looked up as I replaced the detritus of the day with aloe and grapefruit and saw this

Last month,  Auntie M and Mr. T sent me a fruit basket filled with lots of multi-colored paper, some unfortunate fruits, and this plant.  It really didn't need much care; I basically ignored it, admiring its blooms. and picking them up when they fell.  When the last one bit the dust, I took away the basket, plopped the pot into that polka dot container, and, once again, ignored it..... until it announced its presence with authority Saturday night.  

I took it down to the lower counter to reassure myself that there were, in fact, little flowers - a few of them blooming and the rest of them teetering on the brink.  I grabbed my secateur (garden snips; it lives by the sink with the pot holders) and began to trim.  I spent twenty satisfying minutes repairing my prior pruning.  Those dead stalks I thought would sprout buds apparently would not.  

The anthropomorphism has officially begun.  I gave her some water and have begun to contemplate a name.  I'm taking her reawakening as a sign that TBG's health is about to break free from the ridiculous and into the sublime.  I went to sleep with a smile on my face and love in my heart.  

Gardening will do that.