Carrying Water

It’s about 20 steps from the front porch to the kitchen in the back of my house. I know this because my thirsty plants are in the front yard and the sink from which I’m drawing their water is in the kitchen.

I don’t own a professional watering can. Something that is not a 100-year-old pitcher, literally a cast-off ceramic piece when it was made with misshapen mouth and other unevenness, basically what I’m using.

When the water spigot was first knocked off the side of the house by a visitor a couple of weeks ago, not long after I put in my small garden, I immediately became philosophical. Now that I just planted all of those seeds out front, thereby making an unwritten promise to feed and nurture and take care of them, this would be a good first test.

Low and behold, nasturtiums and pole beans and moonflowers are insanely drought resistant. They would have done better with a little extra watering and pampering from me, but they did not need me to survive.

Watering (on my 10^th pitcher now) made me notice that it’s time to start training the little bean plants up strings to the top of their poles. When I planted them in their giant clay pots, I thought they’d find the pole on their own and then nature would guide them the rest of the way. I was wrong. 

The sunflowers, in which I had placed great confidence and hope to wall-off a swing (in which I also have great confidence and hope that I will possess one day) never got past thimble size. There’s one pickle/cucumber plant and one cucumber/pickle plant—I can’t tell which is which.

Now, I haven’t finished tying up the beans—perhaps tomorrow. I got everything watered and stopped to pick up twine, odds and ends, and sweep off the porch. I think what I’m looking through at this time of day is called a “vesper” light and in it, just before I turn to go inside, I catch a glimpse of my original vision—minus the sunflowers.