an apology to geraniums and the elderly everywhere

i've had a thing against geraniums ever since i did a practicum at a greenhouse in germany at the tender age of 16. i don't think they, at the greenhouse, knew what to do with me at first, i could barely understand their dialect, but i wound up being in charge of the geraniums. i planted the seeds, transplanted the sprouts, and then the seedlings again. i got used to the smell of bone-meal and the tangy, peppery smell the geranium leaves would give off when i pruned them. once they were large enough, i delivered them, in enormously heavy containers, up ladder-like flights of stairs, to little be-moustached old ladies who would boss me around and require me to install their cement window boxes for them, then give me a five cent tip. i also planted a lot of geraniums in graveyards.

even then i found them drab, unimaginative, obvious, and over-done, like petunias, and i wondered why on earth people continued to grow either of them. they aren't even attractive.

and i've held this opinion for a good sixteen years then, suddenly, yesterday, i found myself at our local shopping plaza perusing the tempting racks of seedlings for sale. it was one of the first really warm days of spring, over 20 degrees, and anyone with a garden was just hopping to get digging. it was busy despite being a weekday. i had come looking for cosmos and lupins, and didn't find them, but noticed that a full two trolleys were occupied with various geraniums. trolleys that *could* have housed my cosmos, or some other actually useful or comely plant, had some one with any taste or imagination done the seedling ordering. i was indignant.

but then an angel passed, and i looked around me noticing my fellow shoppers for the first time. they were all old. they leaned on each other's arms, or their canes, smiling mildly at no one in particular, shaking slightly, large eyes, slowly looking the plants over, weighing, their gnarled fingers painfully prying the chosen, special plant from its tray, and then trying to find a way to carry it to the cash.

and i was ashamed. i saw myself in 40 years, poor, like most of the elderly, largely alone with a few small pleasures, apartment too small, and joints too aching and arthritic, for serious yard work, sitting on my tiny balcony above a city, remembering stronger, youthful, sunny days when i had had my own vegetable garden, and looking fondly over at my cheap, easily cultivated, arthritis-forgivingly low maintenance, single pink geranium in a pot on a table. a cheerful, living, thing that i could manage to have brighten my days.

i am penitent. i'm going to find a place in my yard for a geranium from now on.