My Limitations Amaze Me

My alarm went off this morning at 6. That is because I set it to go off at 6, even though it is a Sunday.

I had no actual intention of getting up for good at 6. There are some people that enjoy early rising; I am not one. I will sap every last minute of rolling around in bed until I am forced out by hunger or the demands of having a job. This is one of the reasons I don't have a pet.

But nevertheless, I set my alarm for 6 a.m. Because I had bought plants. I have, in my new apartment, a little semi-enclosed area that has some dirt in it, bordering the normal entrance-way/mini-patio. And for whatever reason, I was kind of semi-obsessed with the idea of planting things in that area.

Everybody reading this knows, or can imagine, that I am not what one would call a skilled gardener. Plants wither and die under my care. Even the hardiest of plants. Even when I take my job as plant owner seriously, which I mostly don't. But it is one of my areas of perennial optimism.

Which, actually, I consider a good thing. It may be a little sad for the plants, which die, and it's probably a waste of money and time, but it would also, I believe, be a little sad were I to abandon the dream of plant cultivation altogether, as fit only for a better, stronger breed of humanity than myself.

Anyway, hope sprang eternal and a week ago I went to the gardening center and bought some plants, and some soil, and a little trowel, and a little plant food. Then I got a visit from a friend who actually can keep plants alive and she suggested that I get, in addition, a pitchfork and some starter food.

So then followed a half-depressing/half-childish pleasure-inducing interval of drying to dig holes in the dry cracked soil around my patio. That moment where you realize the extent to which you don't know what you're doing. A kind of furtive burying of the plants in the ground.

Anyway, so my friend who knows about plants told me that for the first week I should be drenching these plants every morning as early as possible. Yesterday I failed to do so, so today I was going to wake up at 6, stagger out, water, return to bed.

And I didn't, because I just turned the alarm off and went back to sleep. Anyway, it just reminded me how strange it is to be alive, to have these things that you want to do, that aren't, on their face, so difficult to do, and yet be continually not doing them when you wanted to, or not doing them in the way you wanted to. How can that be true -- how can it have been too difficult for me to wake up at 6 a.m. to water my plants?

It was, though, and it's not as though I feel particularly bad about it either. Just surprised, mostly.