Prodigal Plants

 

 



Kathy, dickering over the price of pots
 with the gypsy pot merchant

No one has ever accused me of being overly fond of ornamental plants.  It once took me two years of diligent abuse, with a lawn mower, to kill an azalea bush I didn’t like.  But coming up the hill ahead of Kathy on our arrival back on Samos this year, I was immediately stricken by the sad condition of Kathy's plants, or rather by the absence of Kathy's plants, in our alley.  After all the work she had put into landscaping last summer, I knew she would be disappointed.

I had been with her at the nursery, when she had adopted her plants, and I had been in the car when she chased down the gypsy pot merchant who sold terra cotta pots out of back of his pick-up truck.  I watched her lug potting soil up from the village parking lot, and I remember her pride at the thumbs-up she got from the neighbors when she’d finished.
 



What I didn’t want to believe was that most of her plants, and the nice pots they had been in, were gone.  I might have expected dead plants, victims of neglect, or perhaps some broken pots, the casualties of children’s play or a speeding motor bike, but kidnapped plants?  No way, not here.

During dinner our second night here Stella, who owns the restaurant where we were eating, pointed out some of Kathy’s plants around the platia that Stella herself had rescued, moving them up to her restaurant where she could water them.  But these were plants were the stragglers, orphans without names; Kathy’s favorite plants, the ones in the nice pots, were still missing.  On our evening walks, I’d watch her eyes dart to a cluster of plants, in an alley or by a doorway, looking for some tell tale clue as to where her prodigal plants might be.

In a few more days plants started showing up in the alley as if by magic, one here, two there; all of them had obviously been well tended during our absence.  At week’s end we were bringing a new desk back to the village from a shopping trip, when we surprised an old man who was bent over several very large potted plants in our alley, very familiar plants in nice terra cotta pots.  He was winded and spoke no English, but eventually made us understand that there were still two more of our plants up by the church if we wanted to move them ourselves.  He was exhausted and could do no more.



photos by Newell

 

At this point a woman arrived to explain, in very limited English, that she and this man had moved the our plants up to the church after we’d left for the States last year, and that they, and several of our neighbors, had been caring for them in our absence.  If we would but move them back up there ourselves before we left this year, they could be taken care of again next winter.  They uttered a polite “kalispera,” and toddled off, almost before we could express our profound gratitude at such an unexpected kindness from total strangers.