The glass in the sink is full, the tap drips shaking the surface tension of the water as it rocks. It seems to say I’m here. The venetian blinds shatter and reform, shatter and rebuild and they’re the only movement. The sounds change as the drop hits the surface, sometimes a ding, sometimes a tink and I seem the be the water. Still and smooth, then ruffled, then agitated, then quiet, settled. And this how it is. I am contained in the glass for now.

And next to the sink is my tomato plant, I’ve watered it well over these last few weeks and how it’s grown. How tall and willowed it seems now.  In recent days I’ve thought how it’d outgrown its pot, and every day I thought I must re–pot it, give it more room to spread. But there was always something else to do and so it remained in the pot that the seeds had been planted in. 

But it still grew. It’s too tall now to keep indoors and I can almost hear it calling out re-pot me, please re-pot me and I almost did last night. But not quite. This morning though, the day and the weather is perfect.

This morning the grey weight of clouds bandages our town like a sense of a mother in the background of it all, at a distance, keeping watch. And I will re–pot the tomato plant today as our boy makes his way to his last exam before the summer unfolds for him, before his sky opens wide and turns to blue, before autumn expands his horizon. And he will stretch out long and tall and wide, his roots anchored deep in familiar soil but there will be such space, a new pot, vast with potential, rich with extra compost around his wriggling feet and he will spread.

I need to re–pot my tomato plant today. The window is open.  The vague breeze trembles its young leaves, as if to say hello to me, as if to summon me to the soil. It needs a bigger pot and then its steady solid growth will burst up and out and it will flourish and later there will be fruit, soft, round and full of sweetness on our plates.

And we will be nourished by the things we’ve grown. The things tended and cared for and how glorious to watch fruit ripen in the sun, roots secure and leaves and new shoots reaching up. 

The tap still drips into my glass, its tiny tinkling sound repeats, as if a steady clock still marks time. And clouds drift, and things grow. A silent bee on foxgloves nuzzles into pollen. The day wakes up. 

My glass is so full now, I’ll use it to water the tomato plant, to settle it into new soil. It’s early. Our town is quiet, our boy is ready, he picks up his graphical calculator as I open the drawer to my left. 

I pull on my gardening gloves and step out onto the patio. We need a bigger pot.

xxx