Gerald Has Opinions About August

August nineteenth. Gerald's vine reached the shelf below his pot sometime last week, and I didn't notice until this morning when I was standing at the counter waiting for the kettle. I don't know exactly when it happened. That's the part I keep thinking about, not the vine itself, which is just a vine doing vine things, but the fact that it arrived without announcement and I only caught it sideways, in the kind of attention you have before coffee when you're not really looking at anything.

He's been in the low stoneware pot since September 2017. Three years in the same spot, and the growth has been, gradual is being generous. There were the two leaves in April, and then another one in May, and now this: a trailing arm long enough to graze wood.

Gerald's vine, actually touching the shelf. Evidence.

I am not going to claim I know what changed. It's August, the windows have been open more, maybe the light shifted. Maybe he was just ready. I find it easier to give Gerald credit for intentionality than to figure out the actual botany.

The kitchen looks the same as it has for a while now. Windowsill with its objects. Bowl on the shelf above the stove. Gerald in his pot, now with ambitions.

August kitchen. Everything in its place, more or less.

I made breakfast this morning, something with more steps than a Wednesday morning really justifies, which is a habit that has apparently been going on long enough that I don't question it anymore, and I ate it standing at the counter looking at the vine and thinking about nothing specific. Which is, I think, August's actual job. To give you a morning like that and not require anything of it.