I am here with my hands in the dirt.

What fades might, in fact, flourish in time.

This is the handmade wooden plant stand Ben made me, along with a selection of my houseplants.

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For the month of March, my essays focus on variations of nature themes.

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I AM HERE WITH MY HANDS IN THE DIRT.

Actually, I’m not. I hate getting my hands sullied. But I do love the plants whose roots feed off the nutrients in composted detritus. I’ll qualify that again: indoor plants. Because I don’t do exterior landscaping. I’m a strange sort of phytophile, finicky like a domestic cat.

For Mother’s Day one year, I asked Ben to make me a ladder-style plant shelf. My houseplants flourished in front of only one window in our house, an east-facing inoperative patio door that had been sealed shut before we bought this place. To my surprise and delight, Ben crafted a wooden structure, sturdy and stained, that nested perfectly in front of that window.

Once in place, I filled every square inch with plants I received as gifts: an African violet from my mother on my birthday; a large hot pink geranium my daughter Sarah brought home from the school plant show; a mossy fern from my son Joey; a snake plant as a housewarming gift from a friend; kalanchoe succulents in hues of tropical orange, fuchsia, and watermelon for Valentine’s Day from Ben.

I seldom purchase plants or select them on my own. Instead, I nurture what’s given to me, because the cultivation and pruning of a green, living entity soothes my nerves and uplifts my spirits during times of duress or depressive episodes. When the global pandemic struck, I turned to my houseplants as a reminder that some things remain unchanged by catastrophes, unfazed and undaunted of their happenings even.

Every day, as tension mounted in the world and my chest was pressed with suffocating boulders, I’d walk into my kitchen and stand in front of that east-facing window, sometimes studying my plants, sometimes admiring them. I’d pluck browned leaves off of stems, rotate pots so that each side of the plant would equally absorb the rays of the sun, poke my pointer finger into the top layer of soil. If it was moist, I would go on to the next plant, until I found one that was parched.

I noticed something over time: my indoor menagerie of greenery and flowers proliferated in wintertime, when everything outdoors fell into a stretch of slumber. And this contrast nudged me to care for each with greater tenderness, because I could not stand barrenness and desolation and what stands frozen in time. I need movement and warmth and color, and my indoor beauties provided a solution to my arid interior state.

By mid-February, the kalanchoe blossoms popped open, tracing the edges of each shelf, stretching toward the ceiling, or the sky, or the sun. After several years of dormancy, my African violet astonished me with half a dozen amethyst blooms. Even the non-flowering foliage propagated. The fronds of the umbrella plant suddenly donned waxy lime-green “babies,” as I called them to my children, and I’d count them—one, two, three, four!—with childlike glee.

In summer, I spent most of my time pruning and inspecting my plant varietals, often snipping shriveled limbs, dead flowers, or dried up leaves. There were times I’d worry if a particular plant shed too many of these in short succession, and I’d wonder if it meant its life cycle was near the end. Sometimes that was the case, but often it was not.

What I discovered was that severe pruning sometimes yields abundant, verdant growth. When I avoided thinning or shaping each plant, I endangered it in a way, making it more susceptible to disease or pestilence. I learned quickly that I couldn’t leave my houseplants as they were, or they would become frail and wither far sooner than what their life cycle might be with the proper amount of care.

Witnessing every change in growth sharpened my understanding that all things rotate back to their origins, and what breathes can withstand even the harshest of external conditions, like drought and wind and floods and frigid temperatures. What fades might, in fact, flourish again in time.

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Your financial contribution helps supplement our family’s expenses and offset the costs of ongoing medical care for our daughter Sarah that requires 20 hours of unpaid caregiving on my part. I want you to know how much your support means and how it helps our family.