Amputations

After my lamentations this morning, I went outside to retrieve the garbage bin after trash pick-up. On my way back to the rear of the house, at the eastern edge of the front shade garden where it borders the passage through the alley, I saw a large paint chip atop the vestiges of Helene von Stein Lamb's Ear. (While the crew which is working on my windows is neat, invariably paint chips blowing in the wind are deposited here and there.)

I bent down to pick it up, but it was partially frozen to one of the leaves. Apparently I gave it too much of a tug, because it my hand not only did I get the paint chip, but an entire a branch of Ms. von Stein, complete with beautiful, healthy looking yellow-tinted roots, and a few fresh green leaves protected by a few decaying leaves.

I performed an inadvertent amputation! Poor Ms. von Stein! No wonder women steer clear of me. I once squeezed a lady friend's hand and cracked her finger bone. A lean-to for a kiss on the cheek once sent me and my friend nearly tumbling onto the floor because I lost my balance. And no wonder why I am seldom invited to parties in which red wine is featured prominently. My dearest friend Mehrnaz knows all too well the damage that I can inflict upon rare silk Persian carpets.

So I brought her poor little severed arm into the house, and down in the basement "garden center" where I plucked her decaying leaves, inserted her bare roots into soil, brought her upstairs for a thorough watering, and placed her potted self on the sill of a sunny southwesterly facing window. Inadvertent amputations bring inadvertent winter gardening! Violence can be under-rated.

Let's hope that unlike most amputations, her little amputated arm with grow a new body, and her body will grow a new arm.