I’m surrounding myself with plants. You know…. those green things that grow and make oxygen and hayfever. I’m trying to develop my green thumb and grow myself an indoor jungle so that I never have to go outside again. Bring the outside in, I say.

Of course, I’m doing this all back asswards, and I haven’t a clue what I’m doing. I don’t know what my plants are called, and I don’t really know how to take care of them. I just buy them wherever I see them, and I let them grow.

Outside, I’ve got a gorgeous jade plant growing fat, juicy leaves like crazy. Inside, at one window, I’ve got a cactus and two aloe vera plants. At the other window, on the right, I’ve got two tall thingamajigies (the proper Latin name, I tell you), with two viney-looking plant stuff right behind them, next to a new pretty one with cute leaves (Latin names being Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, and Doo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo). On the left, I have two great smelling tomato plants, one of them taller than I am and growing two little green tomatoes, and along the sill—a line of cups with avocado seeds hanging in water.

Now… I’ve grown avocado plants before. I was maybe 10 years old at the time. You stick toothpicks in the seed and suspend the seed in a cup of water. I don’t actually remember it growing from that, but I remember my mother transplanting the plant from one pot to another, so I must have succeeded somehow.

But lo and behold, nothing is happening with my avocado seeds. They’ve so far cracked open, and a bit of something is peeking out, but that’s about it.

“Nothing’s happening,” I’d remark to the all-knowing human encyclopedia.

“Look up how to grow avocados on the internet and see what you’re doing wrong.”

“What do you mean?! I’m doing it just the way I should be doing it. It’s the tried and true way!”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

Days go by. Weeks go by. No progress. They look like they’re struggling, and I get desperate. I look up “how to grow avocados” on Google.

And voilà. I find out that I have suspended the seeds upside down. Well, damn.

No wonder.

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