water craft

Over brunch last Saturday a friend said, "There's something relaxing about watering plants." He and his wife planned to go to a nursery later that day. In our garden there are trees and plants that came with the house when we moved in two years ago. Some of them we bought, the others came from the mother-in-law who is an enthusiast for blooms. I am not an ardent gardener, I water as part of a daily routine of caring for the dependents in the household. It goes like this: walk dogs, feed dogs, water plants, make coffee. I am usually too hungry or sleepy to be relaxed when watering the plants. But I do feel mildly excited when I spot new developments. Such as the time when a plant with purple flowers that had not flowered since the first two weeks of its arrival in our home as a birthday gift from the brother-in-law conceded a bud and proceeded to show off this singular violet mistress for two weeks. When it wilted, there was another, equally coy, but it begged off in a sudden spell of heat. There have been no flowers since. I look hopefully but the plant is decidedly playing hard-to-get. I have asked politely. Presently I suspect that it may be demanding to be called by name. A daunting task. I went back to watering with nonchalence.

There have been other petally surprises before this, some of them fit to be the subject of operas. There is a pot of white orchids bought from a charity bazaar during Chinese New Year three years ago. It is the same story as the plant with the purple flowers. Blooming gaily in the beginning, stoically barren afterwards. There was one time when it seemed to be making a comeback, thanks to the chemical seduction of the mother-in-law's Miracle Flower Food. There was a stalk of buds and they were in the early tentative stages of opening when a thunderstorm in the mid-afternoon threw forceful blows against the blinds behind the orchid rack, swinging them against the rack with such force that the pots went crashing on to the floor of the front porch. The stalk of white buds was bent, one of the buds had half-bloomed and it looked sorry and pitiful, lying by the side of charcoal that had until a few hours earlier been fit only to admire the pretty buds from underneath. There is a lesson here about the levelling effect of natural disaster, I thought, as I swept up the broken shards of pot and the dishevelled orchids. But that is not what struck me when I remembered today what my friend said about watering.

The tenants before us had four bougainvillea shrubs planted as a border between the porch and the front lawn. They were the most sad-looking bougainvillea plants ever spied this side of the island. I dug them out and planted Muriana shrubs in their place. The bougainvillea were transferred into pots and moved to a sunnier side of the garden. They did better than survive. They are easily the most thriving occupants in the garden. All I did was to water them every morning and in the evening pour the grounds from the morning's coffee into the soil. There was no art in their cultivation, only the consistency of a basic routine. There was a friend who came over for dinner once and remarked, "Ah, but they are easy plants to please!" And I would not be surprised if other green fingers agreed with him. But for the gardener inside, the serious anxious furtive hopeful gardener of images and ideas, tending to poem-saplings and story-seeds, watering words and pruning phrases, there can be nothing more comforting than the proof that going at something doggedly with the simplest of intentions and means can sometimes yield an unexpected bounty.