A Prayer For My Plants

When I was younger and used to keep paper journals instead of this online one, I used to write prayers directly into my journal. In red ink. (I think so God would know they were extra-important.)

I think part of the reason having live plants in my apartment makes me feel all Christmas-anticipatory is because there is now a living, breathing, palpable reminder of the Christmas countdown: Can I keep these plants alive for the next twenty days???

I've never successfully kept a plant alive in my life. I still remember being the only kid in my class whose beans wouldn't sprout, and four years ago when I moved into my first "real" apartment one of the first things I did was get a geranium in a pot, which lasted for about a week even though I watered it and did all of the things the little plastic tag on the plant told me to do. (So I threw the geranium in the trash and went to the animal shelter and got a cat instead. The cat thrived.)

Of course, six beans and one geranium do not a track record make, not necessarily. But right now I'm mostly worried that the two cypress bushes and the poinsettia will freeze to death because they're on my windowsills and even though they're getting sunlight they're also getting cold air; and the Christmas-tree-in-a-pot will die from lack of sunlight because it's too big to fit on my windowsill so I've put it on the floor, but it's not in a very sunny spot, so maybe it won't be able to photosynthesize...

So, in short, a prayer for my plants:

Dear God, please help me to keep these plants alive. I'm going to follow the instructions on the little plastic tags, but I know my poinsettia is not in a warm enough place because poinsettias come from Mexico and are not meant to sit on a windowsill in Washington, D.C., and I'm afraid my Christmas tree is not getting enough light, even though maybe in a real forest it would only get that much light because it's pretty small and the other trees would cast shadows over it, and in all fairness I could move it to a sunnier spot, but the sunniest spot in my apartment is where the table is, and if I put the tree there I would have to move the table, but if I moved the table to where the tree is then the table would block the door to my bathroom. Also my Christmas tree is bedecked in Christmas lights so it needs to be near a wall outlet.

But even though I don't live in Mexico and my windowsills are too cold and my Christmas tree is only in partial light, please, please help me to keep these plants alive. Thank you. Amen.