From her front gate to the door the left side of her front garden was ablaze with a flower that had both orange and yellow blossoms on the same plant. The white-haired woman, middle-aged thick, with an apron was clipping back any leaf that wasn’t perfect.
Here people don’t have yards they have gardens, even when flowers are non existence. Grass is not popular, stones, flag or otherwise, potted plants or statues.
In French I told her that her garden was magnificent.
She smiled. “Do you know, all this,” she swept her hand over the yards and yards of flowers, “came from a single plant?” With her shears she cut a single blossom and offered it to me in her gloved hand. “Put it in water with a spoonful of farine ou sucre. You will get roots.”
“Flower and Sugar? I asked, quite touched by her offering.
“Un ou l’autre. And let me know, how it works.”
The blossom is now in a glass of sugary water in the middle of my blue placemat on my table. I am not sure it will root in time for me to plant it one of the large blue pots that flank my front door before I return to Geneva for the winter. I hope so. However, my 18-inch circular garden will never hope to be as beautiful as hers.
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