Living with Plant Time

A plant grows slowly — at least from our perspective — too slowly to watch it grow in one sitting. No leaves suddenly shoot out, and no leaves suddenly wither and fall.

A few weeks ago, when my euphorbia plant showed a sign of slightest decline (a few dried leaves, that is), it sent me into a panic-driven Google search. Did I not water it enough? Did I water it too much? Is it too close to the window? The trouble with plants is that no attempt at remedy sparks an immediate reaction. An apology for my ignorance seems to go unheard. A splash of water just disappears down the soil (Did it get to the roots?). In the end, all I could do was give it water and wait, hoping I did the right thing and rely on its resiliency and time.

On other days, I look at the plant, and it seems to have achieved miraculous growth all of a sudden. “All of a sudden,” in this case denotes an indefinite unit of time during which a stream of obligations blurs my days and dreams. But whether I notice or not, the plant takes in the sun and water and grows. I may influence the course of its life, but in no apparently direct ways. It lives in its own time, which I suspect flows very evenly. And with this consistency, it reveals my perception of time, impacting me more directly than I ever could reciprocate.