On Friday, I begin my investigation. The instructions from my biology professor are simple—for two weeks, look at plants, take pictures, ask questions, and record. This is good, I think, because I've been low on answers recently—questioning has become my strong suit. And I truly believe in the assignment. Can't we become familiar with this world through our questions? Shouldn't we cultivate wonder like seeds?

 

1) On Monday, I notice that the daffodils look like they are made out of two distinct types of petals: the outside flat, triangular ones, and the inside ones, which are ruffled and form a trumpet shape. Are both of these things really petals? How can they be so different? 

 

2) Why are some pine needles coated in powdery substances? My professor encourages us to crush the needles of every pine tree we see beneath our fingers. My skin feels itchy where they prick me, and I wonder if it's possible to be allergic to them. Each new tree offers a similar scent, or maybe they just smell the same to me. Like hot days in a public park, climbing trees alone (the pines were the easiest for any small child—the low branches could almost be mistaken for a ladder). Are there similar scent compounds in all these needles? Is the smell some kind of self-defense mechanism? 

 

3) On Tuesday, I find a beautiful plant outside the science building on campus. It's some kind of bush, dense with whip-thin branches. From each branch, bright green shoots sprout in pairs of two, all equidistant from one another. I run my fingers along the branches, following the gentle line of it up to the new growth. They feel soft and springy beneath my skin. Is it just because they’re newer growth? Why should the older growth be tougher, anyway? Does it have to do with the production of lignin? Why is it growing like this?

 

4) On Wednesday, I take a good, hard look at the jade plant in my dorm. For no assignment and no reason, I take out my notes app and write: growing crooked towards the sun, leaves are tipped with red (does the pigment gather in the cells at the edges of the leaf?). The undersides of the leaves are a different color, too. I look at them, and I feel wonder spark like matches catching in my chest. I have been caring for this plant for three years. Three years, through too-hot summers and bitter cold winters, several relocations, and the monotony of a hundred endless days, and it is still living. It’s nothing short of a small miracle. 

 

Jade plants were my dad's favorite. One year and six months ago, I told my mom this on the anniversary of his passing, thinking about the plant in my room—also not growing straight at the time—and she looked surprised. Maybe it was a fact only I knew about him, something he shared on one of the many summer days I spent quizzing him. Maybe I made it all up.

 

6) In class, I learn that seeds can persist in underground seed banks for decades, or even centuries, unsprouted, waiting for the right conditions. How can this be? Do they not rot in the soil eventually? 

 

During the same class, I learn I have not, in fact, asked enough questions (nor has anyone in my class). We all receive Cs.

 

7) On Sunday, I celebrate my birthday, and I wonder why the Bradford Pear trees bloom before any other flowering tree. Growing up, my father would make me any cake I wanted on my birthday. He'd bake, and answer any questions I could think of, and always, always, he would listen to a baseball game in the background. From the ages of 6 to 13, I only wanted spice cake, but I eventually branched out. This year, I make a spice cake with my friend. Outside her window, the white blossoms glisten wet in the cold April rain.

 

8) I notice a tree next to the music building whose bark is peeling off in huge sheets. Is this bad for the tree? Or is it natural? Since it is still early spring, it is difficult to tell how the tree is doing, there has hardly been any time for new growth to form. If it is bad for the tree, what could have caused it?

 

I ask my professor, and she reminds me that this is meant to be an exercise in asking—the answers are not needed, but she thanks me for my wonderful question anyways. Lately, I have been thinking about answers and the people who used to give them to me. My Google Notes app suggests I move my note titled "questions" to a Google Doc—it's getting too long.

 

9) Did you know there are some plants that bloom only for a single night? Some that bloom every year, over and over? Some you need to plant again and again? A tree might live to be 100 years old, but the basil in my garden has a timeline of only a few months.

 

I can still visit the apple tree my father planted in our yard, but by the species’ standards, it’s still a child. 

 

I see the length of my life stretched out before me, and I cringe. Millions of days, each composed of their own subunits capable of further division, on and on. I think it's true that our lives may be built on concentric cycles tangling together. Each day is repeated, and we live in patterns. In a week or a month or a year from now, I'll live this same day again. We move through space, if not through time. 

 

I try to imagine a version of my life without days, months, or even years. In this world, the timeline of my life would flow in an uninterrupted length. Without any landmarks to separate the smooth advance of it, what would a birthday even mean? To mark the passage of one day in a world like that would be as nonsensical as trying to fold a river over and over into a continuous loop. Could they even exist? Yet, during the unmarked passage of time, new plants would still sprout and flowers would still bloom in predetermined intervals. It’s true that the time by which I live my life is based on the natural world—days, the rising and setting of the sun, seasons, and even years are based on the Earth's long rotations.

 

Is that not the point of our cycles? To segment the endless flow of time? To make our lives more bearable? My 21 years is 252 months, is 7,665 days, is nothing compared to my dad’s 60 years, 720 months, 21,900 days. Even a tree that lives to 100 is dormant for the worst winters, not because the calendar says the time has come, but because a system of internal receptors collects, stores, and compares photo period data, measuring and preparing for shorter days, dismantling and reabsorbing chloroplasts to steel for the long winter ahead.

 

Aren’t the cycles that guide my life arbitrary in comparison? 

 

10) On Wednesday, I check in on the cucumber I planted two weeks ago. It has finally grown a third leaf, and I frown when I see it. Why is it so spiky? Next to its forerunners—perfectly round and smooth—it looks wrong. And why only one? Do they not grow in sets of two? I wonder if the first two leaves are different because they are embryonic leaves, and this new, out-of-place addition is a sign of maturation. When does a plant grow up?

 

11) Lately, I've been thinking about birthdays. When is a plant born? Is it when the seeds are created? Is it when they sprout? Does it even matter when they are born? The zinnias in my garden are annuals, so they won't even make it a full year. Maybe only perennials can have birthdays, and in that case, I'd like to say it is the first day they ever push new, soft, green growth out of the dirt. On that day, they must feel the spring sunlight for the first time, after weeks of cold winter snow melting into water, seeping into the ground, and waking them up. How would that feel? In this schema, perennials may have transient birthdays—each year, there is a new date to be marked as special. In fall, they'll die back, but when spring comes, they'll bloom like it's the first time ever. When I go home, I lie in the grass—still a little wet, but I don't mind—and I watch the young leaves of a daffodil catch the afternoon sun. When my camera shutter clicks, it sounds like rain.