Morning Glories

August 11, 2007

Several years ago, my friend Denver gave me a tiny jade plant cut from a larger one that grew in the backyard of her upstate apartment. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. A stubby stalk with a single leaf. The terra cotta pot it came in was less than two inches tall.

When Denver gave it to me, I had a backyard, and I would keep the plant outside during the warm summer months. My backyard was filled with all sorts of plants. Some, like the assortment of tulips I brought back with me from Amsterdam, I planted myself; others, like the hydrangea and wisteria, were planted by previous tenants, and the rest, like the morning glories, grew wild.

I liked the way the morning glories covered the chain link fence between my yard and my neighbor's yard, and the way their flowers, some purple, some white, bloomed all summer long. But at the same time, they were a pain in the ass. Impatient bullies that, if not weeded out regularly, would climb any and everything in their path, spreading quickly, twisting around the stems of the other plants in a careless stranglehold. Even potted plants weren't safe. Morning glory sprouts hugged everything. The tiny jade included.

When I moved into my current place, most of the plants had to be left behind. I dug up as many tulip bulbs as I could and gave them to my friends and family — I don't think any of them survived— but the larger plants had to stay.

The potted plants, on the other hand, came with me. I still have them all, and they've all done well. I've divided and replanted the jade several times. It's currently in four separate pots, each plant standing a foot and a half tall and a foot wide.

Today, in the pot of one of the jades, I found a small, unmistakable morning glory sprout. A seed must've been hiding, surviving each repotting, waiting patiently for the perfect balance of circumstance to make a break for it. I admired its tenacity and instead of plucking it out of the dirt and throwing it in the trash, the way I used to do, I decided to carefully dig it up and put it in its own pot. Unfortunately, I was a little heavy-handed when I did it, and crushed its delicate stem. It didn't last more than a few hours before its top half wilted and dried.

After all that.

Deborah and I cashed in our change jar at a Coinstar. Despite two machines, there was still a line, mostly old folks, who all seemed competitive over who had more change. Deborah and I didn't get competitive. We didn't need to because we had the most. One hundred and sixty dollars! We took the cash and went food shopping at Fairway in Red Hook. There wasn't much traffic in the car getting there, but the cart traffic in the aisles was intense. I can't decide if I ever want to go back there again. Probably not. I hate grocery shopping anyway.

Last year, my friend Fee gave me a bicycle that he found in the garbage. It was in decent shape for being over thirty years old, but it didn't handle very well on the busted-up Brooklyn roads, and at the beginning of this summer, I decided I wanted a better one. A new one. A dependable one. Perhaps because my motorcycle requires so much maintenance and attention, I wanted a bicycle I didn't have to worry about.

Jason and I are planning an upstate motorcycle ride tomorrow, so I took my new, dependable bicycle to the garage to give my motorcycle the once-over in preparation for our trip. It was such a nice day that I took the motorcycle out for a little ride while I was at it. While stopped at a light, a few blocks from my apartment, three teenagers circled me on their little BMX bicycles and took turns yelling, "Vroom vroom," and "Boo!" The light changed, and I rode away. Vroom vroom.

When I returned to the garage, a photographer was shooting two models in front of a monstrously large chopper. The owner (and builder) of the bike has been struggling to get it running properly for months. When the photo shoot was over, he tried to get the bike started. It backfired with a loud bang that sent all the pigeons flying. He managed to put down the street a little bit, making a racket and blowing blue flames out the exhaust, like a cross between Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and a Big Daddy Roth cartoon.

"He's gonna get arrested," someone said.

I put my motorcycle away, got on my dependable new bicycle, and headed home. I got about halfway there before the bicycle's rear tire seized up. It wouldn't move. I got off and looked it over. I managed to get the tire to turn, but when I tried to ride it, it seized up again. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, and didn't have the tools on me to fix it anyway, so I called Deborah to tell her I'd be late for supper and walked the bicycle the rest of the way home. It wasn't easy. I passed a group of young guys hanging out on their stoop. "Yo, nice bike," one of them said. It wasn't working properly, so I couldn't be sure if he actually liked it or was just being a wise-ass.

Either way, I muttered, "Thanks."

A few blocks later, a group of little kids playing in a fire hydrant tossed cupfuls of water at each other, and when I was close enough, they threw one at me. They missed.

"Uh oh, here come the cops," one of them said. I'm not sure why.

Nearer to home, I noticed a chain link fence covered in morning glory vines. The sun was starting to set, and the purple blooms were closed. I leaned the bike against the fence, bent down, and dug up a tiny sprout. Pushing a bicycle with a frozen wheel was hard enough, but doing so while carrying a delicate sprout in my hand was nearly impossible. But I managed. And when I got home, I planted the morning glory next to the one I crushed earlier in the day.

"There you go," I said to the first one. "Now you have a friend to keep you company during your convalescence."

I didn't have the heart to tell him he probably wouldn't make it.