You never know where that plant that we grow today is going to end up. The root of a plum tree (Prunus domestica) grows today, to sink as far as the terrain allows. Its leaves unfold tirelessly. Linking certain plants with loved ones makes them a treasure of incalculable value, beautiful, fragile and temporary, like ourselves.
Although time seems to perpetuate itself with the flowers of a private garden in Montevideo. (Gladiolus cv.) show their white tepals, with the mouth of the flower painted with a few touches of fuchsia. They are cared for with care by Erika Reichert, a housewife, and they have given her their large flowers every spring for more than 65 years. She did not plant them, but it was her father, Don Carlos: “A German emigrant who arrived in Uruguay in 1926. He died when I was 12 years old, today I am 76. I was able to keep the gladioli that were from his garden and not They changed their color, although their size may have been somewhat smaller. Don Carlos was a lover of nature,” he explains. And that love is reflected in Reichert, another lover of plants and animals, an enthusiastic learner of the beauty of life. Your father still beats
Débora Soriano, from the town of Ágreda (Soria), , Jesús Martínez The Blacksmithof whom he remembers his intelligence and his affection: “His room and mine overlooked the countryside. He was in charge of preparing me to go to school, because my parents worked. “I would wake up and have to open the window to ventilate.” Then some very special views appeared: “To the right you can see the Moncayo and, to the left, the chicken coopwhere my grandfather and his brothers had animals, the garden and farming tools. (Prunus avium), which we have special affection for, and a lilo (Common syringe). My grandfather made us look at the cherry tree every day, when its leaves fell, with snow, with fruit… But it was a party when it was full of flowers. Today we continue looking at the cherry tree and remember our grandfather,” says Soriano.
The cherry tree and its memory has some more feelings to narrate: “Our grandfather also had a tradition: on the morning of June 10, he cut the branch with the best cherries and took them to his daughter Mili, to congratulate her on her birthday. Today, if we can, we continue doing it.” Their roots unite the Soriano family,
For Pedro García, from Molina de Segura (Region of Murcia), it is the (The night sky) the one that evokes his mother, Araceli: “She was from La Mancha, happily transplanted to the Mediterranean, which loved fragrant flowers. “He planted a galan in his garden at night and in summer, as soon as it got dark, he opened all the windows and its smell filled the entire house,” he explains about his memories and the peculiarity of this species to perfume the air when the sun disappears. “She left us one August, wrapped in her favorite aroma. My son and I now live in what was her house, and on summer nights, when the smell of the beau is an almost physical presence, we feel that she is coming home. Is there something?”, concludes García.
Other times, thanks to plants, two loved ones who are no longer here become brothers, as is the case of grandmothers Nieves and Felisa. This is how Aura Pacheco, from Quiroga, a town in the south of Lugo in the heart of Ribeira Sacra, tells it: “Grandma Felisa also lived here, in a small house, until she died in 1999. I, when I was 23, had just left. to live with my husband. We went to empty Grandma Felisa’s house, and the only thing I wanted for myself was the (Hydrangea macrophylla) pink one that was at the foot of the stairs. “I brought it to my apartment, a penthouse with a terrace facing south.” “Here it is still in its pot and is accompanied by another hydrangea that belonged to Grandma Nieves, my husband’s grandmother, who loved plants of all kinds and colors. She was happy when you asked her for one to take home to plant.”
For Chilean Andrea Orellana, her brother, Nicolás, is still alive with his good work with plants: “He had a good hand with plants. Every time there was a dead stocking, I would touch it, take care of it a little and it would revive.” And he gives a clear example: “that they couldn’t survive, and I jokingly asked Nicolás to please touch them, because we always told him that he had a special ability with plants. After he touched them, the ivy grew so much that we had to prune it so that it wouldn’t get out of control from growing so much. The funny thing about this is that I am a landscaper and my brother was a construction engineer, we said that our professions had changed,” Orellana says with a smile.
The roots of that plum tree will soon go to sleep, because autumn is knocking on its door. Although this little tree will run out of leaves in a few days, the sap will strongly fill its buds in spring, to commemorate with its flowering the hand of the person who planted it. He is no longer here, but the beauty of his spirit is present in every sprout, in every memory. A sparrow has just landed on one of its branches.
