Stopping over in phoenix on my way home to Boston a few years ago, I was treated to a rare desert sight: a storm roaring into the city.

The skies opened and rain began pouring down. Then, five minutes after the tempest started, the hotel's lawn sprinkler system came on. Pretty dumb sprinklers. In a city like Phoenix you'd think the gardeners would be running around with Dixie cups to catch every precious drop. Maybe someday the sprinklers will at least be smart enough to check the Internet for a weather report before they start watering. Or maybe they'll just ask the plants themselves.

I wish they could. When I got home to Boston, the plant in my office had withered into a desiccated, brownish heap. Unable to cry for help, incapable of reaching the keyboard to send me a desperate e-mail, neglected and ignored by the graduate students and custodians who occasionally peeked in to see if I'd returned, the poor Spathiphyllum floribundum (a.k.a. indestructible generic office plant) really looked like it was pushing up daisies.

Somehow, even with my black thumb, I nursed it back to health with a combination of Poland Spring water and Peter's Plant Food. But it really irked me that, in this day and age of imported strawberries and bioengineered corn, my poor office plant was forced to sit in a clay pot full of dirt with no means of support whenever I had to be away, doomed to wither and die without a plant-sitter at hand.