I Built My Own App To Water One Plant. I Have Never Been More Self-Reliant.

There is a type of person who, faced with a single houseplant, simply remembers to water it. I respect this person. I also believe this person has given up.

Last month, over one weekend and with the help of a chatbot, I built an app to remind me to water my plant. It is 14,000 lines long. I concede that nobody can read them, myself included. A software developer at a dinner party, Tomasz Wierzbicki, 34, of Leeds, scrolled through it for nine minutes before asking, "Why is there a file called finalfinalREAL?" I take this as evidence of depth. Self-reliance has never required comprehension. The pioneers did not understand their wagons either.¹

Critics, chiefly my sister, object to the login screen. I would argue that a plant's hydration schedule is sensitive information. I would further argue that my password is extremely secure. The app generated it, I have never seen it, and I have not been able to get in since Thursday.

Then there is the premium tier. For a modest monthly fee I unlock "Hydration Insights," a weekly PDF confirming whether the plant was watered. Some call this paying myself to tell myself things. I call it investing in infrastructure. The infrastructure has since asked me to upgrade.

The feature that best reflects my values is the one that emails my mother whenever the soil is dry. This is accountability. "I get about six a day," said Rosalind Hedges, 71, of Shrewsbury. "I've started watering my own plants out of nerves. I don't know what it wants from me." What it wants, Mother, is excellence.²

Some have suggested the soil is drying faster because of the recent warm spell. In the interest of balance, I wrote to the weather on Tuesday and invited it to respond. So far it has offered only light drizzle over the Midlands. I am treating this as no comment, though I have left the window open in case it wishes to elaborate.

The app also has a database. Where that database lives is a question I have chosen to regard as philosophical. It is growing. It knows about the plant.³

People ask whether all this was worth a weekend. I ask them what they built over theirs. Most say nothing, and add that their plants are fine. That is the difference between us. Their plants are fine by accident. Mine is fine by design.⁴

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¹ The pioneers could, to be fair, open their wagons.

² The app has since onboarded three plants I do not own: a monstera belonging to my downstairs neighbour, Funmilayo Okafor, 46, who says she "never signed up for anything"; a cactus in a dental surgery in Leamington Spa; and an entry labelled only "Big One (outdoor?)."

³ It also knows about Ms. Okafor's monstera, which it now lists as "overdue."

⁴ The plant is plastic. It came with the flat. The app has logged 212 successful waterings.