One Window And It Faces A Wall

The lamp goes on at about half past two.

That is how you would describe the light in that room if somebody asked you honestly. Not in terms of direction or hours. In terms of when you give up and put the lamp on, which in the winter is half past two and in June is about six.

There is one window. It faces a wall about eleven feet away, and above the wall there is a strip of sky that gets bright for a while in the middle of the day and does not get sun.

You have read about plants and everything says bright indirect light.

And you have looked at your window and understood that you are not in that conversation.

So this article is going to do one thing, and I want to be exact about what it is not.

It is not going to help you make the best of a bad situation.

There is a tone in a great deal of advice, and it is a kind one, and it is unbearable: how to manage in a difficult space, what to do if you do not have much light, making the most of what you have got. Every one of those phrases contains a comparison, and in every comparison your apartment is the lesser one.

And I am not going to suggest you move it somewhere better. There is nowhere better. That window is the window, and you have looked, and you know your own apartment.

So here is the position this article takes and it does not move off it: that window is the light. Not a compromised version of light. The light in which a living thing will grow in that room, which is a real quantity and is not zero.

What hast thou in the house

There is a moment in Kings where a woman is asked a question by a prophet, and her answer is what makes the story.

And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil. (2 Kings 4:2, King James Version)

What hast thou in the house?

She is a widow, and her creditors are coming for her sons, and Elisha does not begin with what she lacks. He asks what is there.

And listen to her answer, because it is the most human sentence in the passage.

Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.

She says she has nothing. And then, in the same breath, she corrects herself and names the one thing there is, and she names it in a tone that plainly does not count it. A pot of oil. A single small ordinary jar, mentioned almost as an apology for having said nothing.

That pot is what the whole story is built on.

Now I am not going to tell you your window is about to produce something miraculous, and I am not going to build a promise on this passage. What is worth having is the shape of the exchange.

The question is not: what would be sufficient here. The question is: what have you got.

And her instinct, which is exactly your instinct about that window, was to say nothing. Not because she was being falsely modest, but because when you have measured your own resources against what the situation seems to require, the honest report is that there is not enough.

The oil was not enough either. It was what there was, and it was where the work started.

The question asked is what you have and never what would be sufficient, and the small real thing has never once been counted as nothing. 2 Kings 4:2 asks what is in the house and receives a pot of oil, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who has decided he is not in the conversation.

Your window has a number and it is not zero

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction.

You have been treating light as a category rather than a quantity.

That is what the advice does to people. It gives you bright, medium and low, three boxes, and you look at your window and put yourself outside all three, in a fourth box called not really.

But light is a continuous thing. Your room has some amount of it, every day, and that amount is not zero and it is not close to zero. There is a strip of open sky above that wall and it is bright for hours, and a window that faces a wall eleven feet away still receives a large quantity of daylight bouncing off it.

That is not making the best of it. It is a fact about photons, and plants respond to actual light rather than to the category it has been assigned.

So there are things that will grow there. Not everything. There is a whole set of plants that want a south window and they will not do well with you, and I am not going to pretend otherwise, because pretending is how you end up with a dead plant and another conclusion about yourself.

But the set that will grow in what you actually have is not a consolation set. Those are not the plants that failed to get into the good category. They are plants that evolved in the understory of forests, under other plants, in exactly this kind of steady low light, and your room is a better home for them than a bright south window would be.

That is worth sitting with. In their terms, your apartment is not a difficult space. It is the right one.

Your window has an actual quantity of light and it is not zero, and the plants that suit it have never once been a consolation set. The written word begins with what is in the house rather than with what would be enough, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has put himself outside all three categories.

One plant on that sill, a quarter turn a week

So here is the assignment, and the second half is what makes it work.

Put one plant on the sill you have and turn it a quarter turn each week.

One. On that sill. Not near it, not on a table across the room where you can see it. On the sill, in the strongest light in that apartment.

Ask for something that does well in low light and take what you are given. Do not choose the one you like the look of.

And then the turn.

Once a week, give the pot a quarter turn. That is it: a quarter, roughly, in the same direction every time.

Here is why. In a room with one light source, a plant grows toward it. Every leaf reaches the same way, the back of it thins out, and after a few months it is lopsided and reaching and looks like a plant in trouble, and you will conclude the room was too dark.

The room was not too dark. It was one directional, and the quarter turn fixes that entirely, because every side gets the window in rotation.

That is the whole technique in this article. One turn, once a week, and it takes two seconds.

And attach it to something. Turn it when you take the trash out on a Tuesday, or on the morning you do the wash. Not a reminder on a phone, because a reminder is a thing to dismiss. Something you already do weekly, in that room.

And then leave it otherwise. Do not measure the light. Do not get anything to test it. Do not move it around the apartment looking for a better spot, because there is not one and the searching is the thing that kills plants.

You are giving it the strongest light in that apartment and turning it, and one directional light has never once been the same as not enough. 2 Kings 4:2 asks what is in the house and works from that, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody turning a pot a quarter turn on a Tuesday.