Travel Reference
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“Heliconia…”
He paused, fumbling for a piece of paper in his pocket.
“Hey, isn't this the plant our neighbor told us
not
to plant in the sun?”
I rolled my eyes.
We both glanced at the nursery lady, who was smiling in a distracted manner while
surreptitiously glancing in the direction of her tidy hacienda. Maybe a new telenovela was
about to begin.
“And what about shade plants?” I asked Michael. We strode over to the covered section
of the yard. Here we found three varieties we liked, including a lovely Calathea, which (ac-
cording to our notes) our neighbor had expressly recommended for full sunlight.
Was it a coincidence that his advice had been exactly backwards? Or was he just so
perma-drunk he didn't know the difference between sun and shade?
Now we were thoroughly confused. Meanwhile,
señora
was looking distinctly antsy.
“Let's buy a bunch of both and decide where to put what when we get home,” Michael
suggested.
Always a sucker for wishy-washy compromises, I happily concurred.
After helping us load up our car the
señora
waved us off with a sweet smile tinged with
relief. As we drove away she could be seen positively sprinting towards her house.
Back home, we planted everything according to instructions and gave it all a thorough
watering.
Perfection.
Or not.
During his stroll around the garden the next morning Michael discovered to his horror
that three of our new plants were missing.
Let's be clear. They weren't dead, they weren't looking slightly-less-healthy than they
had the day before. They were gone, their absence commemorated by gaping holes in the
ground.
We scratched our respective heads.
I wondered out loud if our neighbor had been so mortally offended by our disregard of
his advice that he'd dug up our fledgling plants. But Michael guffawed at the very idea that
Feliz was capable of following through with such a sustained act of, well, anything. Good
point.
Then what could it be? Neighborhood kids looking for a bit of harmless mischief?
Doubtful.
It was Jane who finally solved the mystery.
Driving by later that day she saw a horse chowing down on our Calathea. She stopped
and shooed him away but not before he'd made mincemeat of half of our horticultural in-
vestment.
Now what? we asked.
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