What's growing?


IN THE GARDEN


Diana was trimming dead branches off rose bushes in the six foot wide planter to the west of the front door. Her older brother Joe was supposed to be cleaning up debris in the east planter, but he’d gotten out of it as usual.

The sprinkler system was on the fritz again. Every time they had a power outage the thing shut down as though it had been personally insulted. Diana didn’t understand why it had become her duty to fix it. Nobody in the house would notice it was off until the plants were sagging in despair and at least one or two things were DOA.

Then her mother would walk the length of the two planters sighing forlornly – touch her finger to the tips of dead branches and say, “Di, can you coax it back to life honey?” Why couldn’t it be Joe’s job?

Of course what her mother meant was not only to re-program the sprinkler timer – which in itself was a frustrating and time consuming job, since Diana could never remember how to do it in between outages and the thing was so complex. (She’d finally hung the instruction book on a nail right next to the contraption in the garage.) – If that wasn’t enough, the job included clearing out the dead and dying bushes, driving down to Lowe’s garden center to buy new, carting it home, and figuring out where to plant it.

Why me? Diana muttered to herself as she viciously beheaded a dead yellow rose bush she’d always hated. It made no sense whatsoever that her mother insisted on rose bushes, her social schedule was so busy she only took the time to look at the planters when things were dead. Maybe Di could get the same consideration and attention the planters got if she keeled over in the driveway. But then who would her mother get to bring her back to life? Joe? Not only was that a horrifying personal thought, but absolutely impossible to imagine happening.

No, Joe had far too many important male-bonding rituals to participate in to be bothered with his younger sister’s corpse. And since their father had absconded with his secretary and investor’s funds; her mother doted on her only remaining male. It was enough to make one sick.

Well, this time Di would bring home the most exotic colors she could find, purples and varied-colors, maybe even branch out into hibiscus or bird of paradise. Her mother probably wouldn’t notice until they were either dead or six feet tall.

Diana didn’t consider her self a gardener; she really had no time for it. Maintaining her grade point average and lusting after an ivy-league admittance were her main goals. But, by God, if her mother was going to continue foisting this responsibility on her, she could at least do it her way. Not her mother’s, not her absent father’s, not Joe’s, but hers.

Hmmm, maybe a small tree? Eucalyptus?