March 22 – Planted

In front of our house in Iowa I planted rows of moss roses along the sidewalk. My friend Randi, who knew everything about growing things, told me a neat thing about moss roses. If a stem breaks off you can just stick it back in the dirt; it will take root and continue to grow. Sure, enough, stems did get broken off – this was a sidewalk where children played – and sure enough, when I popped them back in the dirt they did just fine.

I don’t know if you could do that with just any old dirt, though. This was Iowa dirt. Some of the best dirt in the world. I came to understand when I lived in Iowa that its greatest beauty is in the ground – its soil. Black and beautiful.

Not only was the soil its greatest beauty, it was its greatest value. Everyone in Iowa cared about it – it was the economy. On the TV weather forecast, along with the temperature and humidity the reporter would tell us the subsoil moisture level. Of course, we wanted to know.

I never tried to grow a garden when we lived in Iowa, which seems like a waste, looking back on it. Why didn’t I? I had babies and work; all I can remember is my hands being very full. It’s too bad I didn’t have time to plant anything more than moss roses, because it was a great place for growing things.

But not trees, though. You could hardly grow trees in Iowa. There just isn’t enough rain. I remember one celebration of Earth Day, they handed out saplings at church, for us to plant somewhere. As we all received our trees, a woman nearby told me they wouldn’t have a chance of surviving. She said the thing you needed to do was take ten of these little saplings and plant them together, kind of in a bundle. Then maybe one tree would grow. One little tree might beat the odds.

In Pennsylvania, where we moved after Iowa, trees were so easy to grow. All that rain. All that subsoil moisture.

Personally, I’ve never seemed to last all that long where I’m planted. Maybe I’m sort of like the moss rose – when I break off, I can be popped back in another spot and make some new roots. But I’ve never been like a tree, growing deep, immovable roots, staking out a claim on a piece of territory.

Bloom where you’re planted, people say. Wherever you find yourself, make it fruitful. 

Let us cultivate our garden, Candide says. Make your little part of the world a better place. 

That’s all any of us can do, anyway. Right?

Photo: Moss Rose. By Carl E Lewis - Portulaca grandiflora, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8293202