To Own Something Beautiful

It was well worth the price. By Jonita Mullins

From Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul

Art by Shelley Jackson

During the days of the depression and World War II, my mother was raised by her Grandma Wilson, a widow with no pension and no Social Security. Their huge vegetable garden was a necessity, not a luxury, often providing them with the only food they had to eat. They survived by raising their own food and renting out three rooms of their small five-room house.

One day, Grandma Wilson was out working in her yard, tending her irises. “Flags,” she called them, and they held a special place in her heart. She couldn’t afford to buy new flowers to plant ,so she lovingly tended the ones she had.

Just then a neighbor lady, an older woman, came by on her way to work. She walked up to the fence and looked down at Grandma.

“Would you be willing to sell me those flags?” she said. “I surely do admire them.”
Grandma hesitated. Sell her irises? They were one of the few pieces of beauty in her hardscrabble existence.

“I’ll give you a dime for them.”

Grandma stood up and wiped her hands on her apron. She hated to part with her irises, but a dime was a dime, and heaven knows she needed the money. Grandma knew her neighbor needed that dime, too. Perhaps she needed the flowers even more than Grandma did.

“You can’t dig them now,” she said. “You’ll have to wait until after they’ve finished blooming.”

“I know,” the neighbor said and reached in her purse for the dime.

“Oh, no,” Grandma said. “You can pay me after you get the flags.”

“No,” the neighbor said, smiling. “I’d better pay you now while I’ve still got the money.”

So Grandma took the dime and thanked her, trying to still the regret rising in her heart.

The weeks passed and the blooms faded. It was time to dig the bulbs. But the neighbor lady, even though she passed by almost every day, didn’t say a thing about it. Grandma kind of hoped she’d forgotten. But she knew in her heart that wasn’t right, so she promised herself that the next time she saw her, she’d remind her to dig the bulbs.

A few days later, the neighbor came down the walk towards Grandma’s. She was walking with one of her daughters. They were engrossed in conversation.

“You see them flags?” she said. “They’re mine!”

“What do you mean they’re yours?” the daughter said. “Did you ask Miz Wilson for them?”

“No, I bought ’em!”

“Them why are still in Miz Wilson’s yard?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take them away. Miz Wilson doesn’t come by our house, but I walk by here nearly every day!”

The daughter was puzzled, and so was Grandma.

“This way we both can enjoy them. I don’t have time for working in a garden, but Miz Wilson takes mighty good care of them.” She smiled and looked at Grandma.

“I just wanted to own something that beautiful.”