I’m already behind. For shame. Yesterday’s post has become today’s. Guilty. Head is hung low.

Ok. That’s enough perfectionistic self-pity. On with the post!

This little plant has been sitting on our kitchen counter for weeks now, since mid-July to put it into perspective. Our kitchen has two incomparable sky lights which make the kitchen a great place to both cook and grow things like this little sucker.

I’m not sure of its name. A friend told me some time back but I obviously didn’t care enough to remember. I just wanted it to grow. My mum found it on the floor in Lowes and like a good plant lover, she asked permission to take it home. It had no roots. It had obviously been sadly and unintentionally disconnected from its home base. It would have ended up in that day’s trash heap…if Lowes even has heaps.

So this little champ has been sitting in water ever since then. Not knowing what it was, I didn’t know how to feed it except for water. Not knowing how much water was too much, I simply hoped for the best. After a couple of weeks, I began to worry. There was zero sign of rooting. But on the bright side, it didn’t look like it was dying. I had hope.

I kept hope alive. One day, after harvesting some citrus mint from the garden, I stuck two sprigs in the bottle with the unknown plant. At least then it would have some pretty company.

Some time later, I realized the mint had seen better days and tossed it. When I looked into the bottle again, I noticed something different. Thinking it was just a fallen mint leaf, I was ready to pluck it out of the water. But wouldn’t you know?! It wasn’t a mint leaf. It was a root…attached to the bottom of the unknown plant. The unknown plant had rooted!

There’s nothing quite as satisfactory as seeing growth, tangible growth. And now I’m beginning to see a pattern in this 31-day writing challenge–the things I’ve photographed, even the ones I have yet to write about so far, reflect my values. No wonder I like them. No wonder I could so easily think of them, stage them, and capture them on my phone. They speak to what I can’t seem to live without.

Growth is non-negotiable. If I’m not able to clearly identify it in my life, then I try to see it in other lives. I think that’s why I like gardening. It’s even better than teaching (though I like that, too) because there’s no grading involved…though I guess that’s what pruning is and I can’t say I love it. Yet I enjoy getting outside and looking at the beauty that plants display, knowing that a bit of my hard work has made all this possible.

Growth lets me know something good’s at work.