September 6, 2017 – Divide and Conquer

This is the Writer’s class May 15, 2017 project.

Describe a time when you “stepped up to the plate” when called on.

        Seeing me out in the garden, my back door neighbor and new best friend visited me in the garden after she’d changed out of her work clothes.

        “What are you doing?” she quizzed.

        “Lifting and dividing chrysanthemums?” I replied looking up at her as I was on my hands and knees in the garden.

        “Why?”  She quizzed dropping comfortably into a nearby lawn chair.  She was always interested in what I was doing in the garden.

        “If you don’t divide them, they will choke themselves out or bloom poorly.”  I answer and continue pulling off strong rooted pieces and potting them up. 

        After she watched me pot up several she asked,

        “Can I have one?”

        “Sure.”

        I thought nothing more about the evening other than it was a nice visit from a friend until late the next afternoon.



        I am in the garden and can hear my house phone ringing.   I start to count the rings.  Any time it is over 10 rings, I am certain it Mom; it’s our special code.  After 7 rings, I dust myself off from the garden and run to answer the phone.

        “Hello?” I answer expecting my Mom on the other end.

        “It’s me, I have sorority tonight and my speaker has cancelled.” Becky states.  She continues.

        “Can you come to my sorority meeting tonight and talk about what you showed me last night. Dividing up the Chrysanthemums?   All these gals love flowers but I bet they have no idea you can lift and divide them to get more.  I didn’t know.”

        “Sure, what time?”

        “Seven p.m.”

        “How many gals?”

        “Usually between 8 and 10.”

        “I’ll stroll over around 6:45.”

        “You’re a lifesaver, thank you, thank you, thank you.”  She gushed and hung up.

        I immediately grabbed a large black trash bag and headed out to the garden to get prepared.   I deeply watered another overgrown clump of mums that needed to be divided.  I collected a dozen plastic quart pots and filled them with good potting soil.  I left the shovel, garden gloves, & root tone in the wheelbarrow for later.

        Promptly at 6:40 p.m. I dug up the overgrown clump of mums and plunked it on the big plastic bag on top of filled gallon pots and wheeled it next door to Becky’s back porch.   Within moments we had the clump on a card table near the front door.  

As the sorority gals arrived, they were most curious about the clump of lacey green leaves with red clay roots and soil held in check by the upturned edges of the black plastic bag.

       

        After a glowing introduction by Becky, I pulled on garden gloves and explained all about Chrysanthemums as I divided the clump, dusted with Root tone and potted up a dozen mums.

I later got reports of “the best speaker they ever had.”  And, years later, some of her sorority sisters remembered me and the program when Becky and I happened to meet them out and about.