Watching Out

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks."
-Tennessee Williams

My Spouse has jetted off once again and I am alone. Yet, not quite.
Some dozen onion bulbs and a cactus, newly embedded in soil, are mine to tend for this next week. We planted them the evening before last and I am fearful already.
I do not have the nimble grace that my Spouse is possessed of; doubtless he could plant a rock and a house would grow.
I am bereft of power to coax leaves into life; they watch me from their corner, silently mindful of their surrogate guardian. I very nearly suggested that Spouse bring them to Texas. Surely, I thought, they would find better refuge squatting in a suitcase than any time in my company?
I eye them now; they stretch away from me toward the window, the sunlight and the direction in which my Spouse went.
Six minutes after Spouse gently folded dirt over the precious food-to-be and the cactus, he returned to the room to see if anything marvellous had transpired. How charming and childlike and hopeful to imagine that mere seconds could magically see onion bulbs growing and changing- and pessimistic and self deprecating, at the other end of the spectrum, to think that the same length of time could undo them.
I should have hope that the wild things know what to do beyond anything that my hands could assist with.