I can usually keep a plant alive. Not always. But I’ve always had a potted plant with something in it near me. I like the plants that dramatically wilt to remind me that they need water. I will notice an impatients plant with unsubltle drooping wilted leaves and then go around and put water on all the pots.

There is a trick to it. If the water hasn’t hit the soil in a while, the first thing that happens is that the water skims off and out, splashing out and everywhere but into the dirt where the plant can use it.

The soil needs the water and the plant wants the water, but the first reaction is to repulse the liquid like a reverse polarity magnet. “Get away from me!”

It even creates a kind of current as the water starts a motion to leave the soil’s surface.

This phenomena happens in our desert landscape when it rains. The soil is hardened, slick and not at all willing for the water to merge in. There has been unseasonable rain this fall, and our TV keeps interrupting the regular programming with claxon sounds of warning

FLASH FLOOD IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY

BEWARE

I’ve never been in the beware zone of a flash flood, thank heaven. But I’ve seen my potten plants sheet off the life-giving water that way so I can imagine a whole landscape and the danger it would give if the rain had nowhere to go.

I am the god of my captive plants’ life. I have to wrestle with them to get the water where it needs to go. I’ve found that if I put a little bit of water on the resistant soil and let it rest. the soil will eventually come to terms with the change of state from hard and dry to acceptance. One that first little bit of water penetrates the surface,, THEN the soil will allow itself to accept all the water it can. The water fills in all the spaces in the soil and most especially the areas near the roots so the plant can get what it desperately needs.

I can be like that. SO STUBBORN to resist what it turns out I am dying for. Even if I have an inkling that what I’m starting to experience is a desperately needed change, I can push it away and assert my mastery over the circumstance.

“Yes, well, this water feels weird. I was thinking that once I dropped all my leaves, then the moisture currently in the air would be more than enough…More than enough! No need to change a thing.”

I need to sit with this unfamiliar newness. I should let it penetrate. Once the flow into the heart happens, it will be so easy and good.