Essays

my mother’s garden

Every summer she tried. For Mother’s Day my father would take her to Honker Flats greenhouse, and we would load the eight passenger van up with so many plants that it was hard to find a place to sit; an apple tree would poke its branches into the backs of our scalps, pansies bloomed around our feet so that we had to sit cross-legged on the over-warm leather seats, tomatoes sat on our laps like the puppy we all wanted but didn’t have.