Plant Food

There was only mild surprise in the neighborhood when it was discovered that his wife of thirty-two years left him. He was better off without her, they told him. And for once, the private gossip repeated the public sympathy; he really was, they all agreed, better off. Iris had been mean-tempered, sharp-tongued, demanding. The only thing she'd ever shown any affection for had been her rose garden.

The neighbors had been slightly more surprised when, a week after his Iris had left, they'd awakened on a Saturday morning to discover all her roses lying on the curbing for the trash collecters. He'd dug up her garden during the night. The poor man, they'd said amongst themselves, he was overcome by grief and anger. They'd baked him banana nut bread and left foil-covered dishes of lasagna on his porch, with instructions on how long to heat it.

The real surprise came in the summer, when the lovely lavender-colored irises grew up in the old rose beds. How sweet, they'd thought, and how sad. And how well they grew; what was his secret?