Transplant

Photo by pawightm, flickr.com

A pot of flowers doesn’t seem like much. It can’t begin to compensate for the loss of rose beds, lemon trees, and azaleas just coming into their glory. But at least it’s something to greet my in-laws the day they’ll cram what they can of more than 60 years of marriage into two tiny rooms in their new retirement home.

My in-laws have never cared about material things; flowers are the one indulgence they allow themselves. A pale yellow Cecil Bruner rose foams over the entry of the Craftsman bungalow they are about to leave behind. Blue bells, daisies, holly—every season’s bounty—always grace the coffee table in the living room. My father-in-law, who disapproves of brooding as a foolish waste of time, has banished all misgivings about their imminent uprooting. Still, he confessed to me a few days earlier that he felt a pang as his prized roses were starting to leaf out. He will want a bit of dirt to fuss over.

At the nursery, I select lemon-yellow ranunculus, blue pansies, white impatiens, and a single periwinkle to spill over the edge of a big ceramic planter. I carefully ease the flowers out of their plastic cubes and transplant them into the readied planter, adding a little extra soil to fill in the empty spaces. Bits of dirt smudging the pansies’ upturned faces wash away as I give the pot a good, gentle soaking. It looks perfect.

I get to the retirement home a few hours before the movers and my in-laws arrive. After reaching their patio, I bend to put the pot in place, but it slips out of my arms and crashes. I watch helplessly, unable to reverse the inexorable descent. Dirt and ceramic shards are everywhere. The flowers I had so tenderly transplanted now lay crushed under two cubic feet of soil.

I pull the shards from the rubble, then frantically comb through the dirt with my bare hands. The sweet blue faces of the pansies emerge, and here is the tattered head of the ranunculus. It is a cool, overcast day; with enough soil clinging to their roots, perhaps the flowers will pull through.

But I cannot yet tend to the shocked transplants. I still have a mess to clean up. With tape and scissors as my only tools, this will be a difficult task. After all, I was intending to stop by just long enough to drop off the flowers and affix a “Welcome” banner to the blank walls that await my in-laws.

I shake the dirt off my jeans and sneakers as best I can, and struggle to unlock the front door. I notice that I have tracked dirt onto the new carpet, and am bleeding from the broken pottery. My fanatically tidy in-laws’ new home has all the charm of a chain motel, but at least it is spotless. Or was. Now the traces of my good intentions are ground into the carpet, smeared on the counter.

Somehow I get the bleeding to stop, arrange the banner, and blot up the carpet as best as I can. Finally I return my attention to the dying plants, thrown onto pottery shards like bodies piled on a cart destined for a mass grave. At last, I drive home with my load of dying flowers and dirt.

Once there, I find another pot, slightly battered, with a patina of dirt and mildew. Filling it almost to the brim with the salvaged potting soil, I carefully transplant each bedraggled flower. The flowers are wilted from their ordeal, but there is nothing else I can do.

I hope they take root in their new home.