Someone is watering my plants.
I first noticed this with the peace lily. I had watered it mid-week. (I remember because my book club meets on Wednesday, and it was my turn to host. A wilted lily would have been a greater topic of conversation than Where the Crawdads Sing.) The spathiphyllum consumes water like a hungover teenager. Yet when I went to water it two days post-Crawdads, the soil was moist, and a small puddle rimmed the inside of the planter.
I thought nothing of it at the time. Attributed the anomaly to weather or luck or the vagaries of light. But when the butterfly palm that sits beside the lily continued to send its leaves skyward long after they should have drooped in despair, I knew something more than light, luck, or low barometric pressure was the root cause.
After this, I made it a point to record the date and time I watered each plant. This was no small task. There are twentysix plants. Within two weeks, twenty plants did not require me to water them even once a week—but they were not dry. Indeed, they looked healthier than under the care of my green thumb.
Initially, I thought the watering spree might be an unexpected act of kindness, my husband rising to the occasion and lending a hand after twenty-six years. Who knew, perhaps dishes would be next. Despite that first rush of hopeful adrenaline, however, my serotonin levels returned
