A place of comfort

Springtime is almost, almost here. There's a mist of green among the understory trees and shrubs clustering the property lines behind the house. It has been raining since yesterday. My friend (now more than a friend) BG is off somewhere in the button-round hills leading a hike. I am following my usual Saturday rituals. Saturday is my day of relaxation. I've finally learned to give myself one of those. I get up late and unhurriedly. I let Apollo out of his crate and into the yard. After he does his sprinting and sniffing routine, call him back into the house with me, where I make myself some breakfast, usually hot cereal simmered slowly in milk. Then I clean the house.

I rent from a middle-aged single father whose teenage daughter lives here most of the month. I have two small rooms and a bathroom on the right-hand side of the house, along with access to the kitchen and living room for both myself and Apollo. Gigantic dogs shed hair, so part of the agreement for renting here is that I vacuum after him. I do a more thorough job than anyone here expects--usually dusting and tidying, a little extra scrubbing in the kitchen.

Renting here has had its ups and downs, but on days like these I especially aware of why I choose to live in close proximity with a family in a private home, instead of some little apartment off the interstate. The truth of the matter is that I don't do very well on my own. Mind you, I think I'm a pretty mature 24-year-old. I have a full-time job as intern/technician at a national lab. I pay all my bills and college loans and help a younger sibling with college tuition and living expenses. But living alone just doesn't work out very well for me. It seems I must have people to come home to in order to retain my sanity and compassion. Life for us humans was meant to be lived together and I am a rather vulnerable example of that.

The Listless Flower

A peek at my desk at work will clue you in on the real reason I do research: I love plants. I'm already growing hundreds of Arabidopsis, soybean, poplar, and switchgrass plants in greenhouses and growth chambers, but I still keep two African violets and three Pothos rescued from my renter on my desk, along with various cuttings soaking in a plastic juice bottle full of water. I also have a rangy begonia, which is unfortunately not flourishing like the others. Begonias aren't that difficult to keep alive and with the right conditions they can be stunning. Mine is not. My begonia has straggled along for months now. It grows, but the new leaves emerge oddly curling and twisted, and those lower on the stems progressively yellow and fall off, leaving long, bare stems that sprawl gracefully from behind my computer (this is classic shade avoidance phenotype--elongating, non-branching, sparsely-leaved shoots). My plant also flowers, and in classic begonia fashion the flowers are short-lived and shed often. The fact of the matter is that begonias are particularly messy plants to grow and mine is no exception. However, I rather like this aspect of my plant, particularly on very quiet days like today, when few people are around and the loudest noise you hear is the steam pipes rattling in our ancient building. At random times throughout the day the stillness is interrupted by the softest of sounds: the fall of a flower.