Two eighteen-inch flowerpots stood empty in the front entryway of our new house. Two weeks earlier, my husband, Grif, and I bought our first single-family home here in South Florida. Built in 1965, it was a good house, in an ideal neighborhood, located on a spacious corner lot. As we hauled in our furniture and too many boxes, we kept asking each other, what’s the catch? How did we luck out finding such a great house in our price range?
The previous homeowners had left us the two flowerpots, along with about fifty other garden pots scattered throughout the front and back yards. While I admit that I am a plant lover, I definitely did not love chucking pot after pot of half-dead cacti, invasive snake plant, weeds, and pots filled with pure dirt into the trash bin. I felt a tinge of guilt as I shoveled a white pot labeled “Nonna’s Garden” and its requisite dead plant into the garbage. But hell, if this was the cost of getting a great deal on our house, then so be it. As I roamed our new property, I felt like I was being forced to join a treasure hunt I didn’t want to participate in, with questionable treasures, as every additional pot I found was a reminder of the previous homeowners’ lasting imprint.
I needed to put our stamp onto the property. I needed a quick way to bring our own energy into our new home. And so, I ventured to the local garden center and brought back two flats worth of flowers and potting soil. As I unloaded my floral treasures, I looked through the retrofitted, hurricane-proof glass of our front window to see my husband diligently setting up the high-speed Wi-Fi. Priorities! I thought, as I chuckled to myself.
I looked down at the unloaded array of flowers before me – cheery yellow marigolds, flashy pink zinnias, and bright lantana. With their perfect pops of color, they were ready to give a retro, flower-power vibe to our new home. I carefully removed one of the marigolds from its plastic container, ensured that I did not injure its roots, and placed it in the flowerpot at our front entryway. I gingerly pressed the loose soil around its roots and remembered that the marigolds were for my grandmother.
Every Mother’s Day, my father would take my two younger sisters and me to my grandmother’s house on Long Island, New York. We would diligently stick the yellow and orange marigolds into the soil beneath her street trees, typically beneath a steel gray sky. After inspecting our work, “Very good,” Grandma would tell us. We would then follow her single file into her house. Our ration was two buttermilk cookies each from the tin can. We munched quietly at the linoleum kitchen table, our legs dangling, with a needlepoint sign above our heads, reminding us that “Children should be seen and not heard.” I brushed the potting soil off my garden gloves and stepped back. “Very good,” I thought to myself as I admired the newly planted marigolds.
Next up were the zinnias, the last few available this late in the season. The zinnias were for my grandfather on my mother’s side, who was unrelated to my marigold grandma. He used to proudly grow zinnias from seed in his suburban backyard. The zinnias would bust into a cacophony of color by late summer and were the perfect backdrop for our family barbecues. Hamburger smoke mixed with cigarette smoke as my sisters and I giggled on the old swing set that my mom and her sisters once swung on long ago. After too many decades, the swing set had succumbed to the elements and let out a painful screech in protest whenever anyone sat down on its rusty swings. Eventually, my grandfather painted the remaining frame white and repurposed it as an arbor set amongst his zinnias. I took a fuchsia zinnia out of its container and nestled it into my flowerpot next to the marigolds. I smiled, remembering how I had once dreamed of hosting family gatherings in my own backyard one day.
Last in the floral brigade were the lantana, a variety called ‘Confetti’ which featured a celebratory medley of yellow and pink flowers that meshed well with the marigolds and zinnia. A known attractant for pollinators, I bought the lantana for the butterflies. I pictured monarchs, swallowtails, and gulf fritillaries fluttering about the flowers as I planted the lantana in the garden pot. Butterflies… a perennial reminder of the transformative power of nature. I felt like my whole life was one giant series of transformations. It seemed like as soon as I had finally gotten through one challenge and arrived on the other side, the universe threw me another curveball, and I became a lowly caterpillar once again.
I twisted on the faucet and pulled the green garden hose over to the entryway pots. A spray of water droplets landed on my freshly planted flowers. Every guest and every delivery person who came to our home would walk by these flowers to our front door. Would they feel the joy and happiness bursting forth in full color at our doorstep? Would they feel the ease of settling into a house that finally felt like a home? Would they feel the immense gratitude of finally having our own space?
I bent down and turned off the irrigation, the wet flowers sparkling in the sun. A newfound lightness swelled in my heart – at least for now, it felt like I had arrived, a fully formed butterfly. This house, this land, was finally and fully MINE. After years of apartment living, condo living, and then townhouse living, I was finally released from the restrictions imposed by landlords and homeowners’ associations. As long as Grif and I abided by the law and paid our taxes, of course, we could do whatever we wanted with our property. At 43 years old, I finally found a home that offered me the freedom to live how I wanted to live.
To say it was a long homecoming is an understatement. In the past fifteen years, I moved ten times, across three different states – New York, Colorado, and Florida. I endured many perils of cheap Florida living, including palmetto bugs, persistent mold, and unsavory roommates. In a rundown apartment in North Miami, I would walk to the bathroom in the dark so I wouldn’t have to see the roaches scattering in the night. In what was previously an affordable housing unit in Coconut Grove, Miami, a leaking pipe deep in the walls sprung mold spores that settled over all my worldly possessions. And in a trendy high-rise in Fort Lauderdale, I would be trapped in my bedroom on multiple occasions while my roommate and her boyfriend made raucous love on the couch right outside my door, again.
When visitors come to the front door of our new house, I do not want them to feel the chaos that I had to live through in order to get here; I only want them to feel welcoming joy. When I walk past my flowerpots of marigolds and zinnia, I feel the delight of my ancestors cheering and clapping me on. “You and Grif finally made it, you’re finally home! We are so very proud of you!” they would say as a butterfly alights on a flower and then flutters off as quickly as it had come.
love, Lexy
