Susan Spilecki

I have learned that plants require us to talk less and listen more, the less to intervene, the more to nurture. Clover at the base of the picnic table when I was four and painting in a coloring book: pale blue, I thought, would be so much prettier than green, but Clover died by morning the next day. Green needs to be green. A few years later, glorious Magnolia in the corner of the backyard when we moved half an hour south: our neighbors told of former neighbors who drove back each spring to see the magnificent pink blossoms, to hold that sight in their memory. Pink meant spring despite New England mud time. Years later, a small Basil cutting from a friend lived two years in water with occasional plant spikes for nourishment. Then Ivy demanded dirt and lived close to the edge of death whenever life became chaotic and dry. Then in the dying time of the pandemic, another Basil plant, large, affable. The former roommate’s room was sunny four hours a day, and Basil thrived, offered savory scented leaves to add to our dinner, until, one day, the cat.

I have been cautious since: listening, watching for tree buds, barely perceptible compared to Snowdrop, then Daffodil, Crocus—white, then yellow, orange—then late in April, Magnolia and Dogwood pink. Then…but I have not memorized them all. Summer brings Balloon flowers, those unlikely boxes that break into petals, indigo unexpected. I have learned that it is easy to kill accidentally, through a failure of attention, to ignore through a perceived lack of time. But the reverse is also true: attention is love, and love does not cut something off at its roots or tap, tap, tap it off the window ledge. Decades will take their toll: the Magnolia so much smaller than it was, long sitting-branches fallen due to icy, late winter, my climbing tree bereft. It would barely hold me now, as an adult fifty years later. Last week, the house went on the market. Yesterday, a buyer offered more than we asked and wrote about wanting to live there (not flip the tired house). I wonder if she’ll notice the old tree, if she’ll see the pink flowers as we, our neighbors, and their old neighbors saw: a celebration.