Jeremiah, my love

Jeremiah, my love

I wrote earlier this week on cultivating a relationship with a plant, and I'm happy to report that our liaison has taken root. I have named him Jeremiah; or he has called himself that. One can never be entirely sure where original ideas truly blossom from. Each morning when I come into the kitchen I say, in as bright and loving a voice as I can manage at that hour, "Good morning, Jeremiah, my love." And in the evening when I go up to bed, feeling infinitely more awake and cheerful than earlier in the day, I depart with a "Good night, Jeremiah, my love; sleep well." I feel it is important to actually say the word "love": of course this emotion can be imparted merely by tone of voice, but the spoken word has a weight and a depth which must not be underestimated.

Jeremiah likes to sit by the window, sometimes looking into the garden at the blackbird, and sometimes facing into the room to watch me potter around the kitchen. I have been asking him which way he'd like to face each day, and I don't believe he has a strong preference, although on sunny days he does like to face the outside world. He lives just behind my piano, Wagner, and he is proving to be a very good listener. I think he likes Chopin, but I do have a tendency to presume that of everyone.

His new shoot looks very healthy. I can't be sure of any significant effects since I started this experiment, as I did not take baseline measurements and it is far from a controlled trial. But since happiness and healing are the main objectives of this exercise, and these are not easily quantifiable (albeit not impossible), I don't think scientific accuracy matters a great deal.