The Woman Who Waters Flowers

by: Director of Upper School & Auxiliary Programs Jordan Andes

At Rossman, our 20-acre campus affords students the opportunity to explore, learn from, and appreciate nature. The Pollnow Nature Trail, Peyton's Garden, the Willeman Tree House, and the Rossman bee hives are testaments to the beauty that can be found when you tend to the natural world. We also have community values of kindness, honesty, respect, and responsibility. I believe that nature and character formation have a unique tie. In this week's blog, I share an essay I wrote in honor of a neighbor who cultivates the natural world and serves as a reminder that character is often expressed in small, unrecognized ways.

When I moved into my house, I planted a tree. It was a housewarming gift—a white dogwood with small buds and a trunk no bigger than a branch. I planted it in my front yard so that I would see it when I pulled into the driveway, and the scent would be on the street when it bloomed.

I was unpacking boxes one afternoon when my doorbell rang. It took me a moment to recognize that the chime was mine. By the time I got to the door, there was no one there, just a small brown bag tied with a ribbon. I opened it and pushed aside a layer of tissue paper to find a card, its note written in soft cursive letters.

Thank you for bringing a new tree to our neighborhood. Along with the note was a gift card to a nearby nursery. There was no name attached. I glanced down the street and caught a glimpse of a woman with long, gray hair walking around the corner.

I planted the tree in March. At the time, I hadn’t realized that the closest spigot was at the back of my house, on the other side of the fence. Each day, I unwrapped a long hose, draped it over the fence, and pulled it around front to water the tree. Flowers appeared in April, and the dogwood dug into the ground.

In May, I saw the woman with long, gray hair again. She was strolling along the street during a light rain with her hands in her jacket. I waved through the windshield as I drove by. She smiled and waved back. Every now and then I would see her in the neighborhood, always from afar or as I was driving to go somewhere. I didn’t know her name or which house was hers. Sometimes she was walking her dog. Sometimes she was enjoying her own company. And sometimes she was carrying a red bucket. 

My daily waterings waned and by the time summer stretched into August, the dogwood leaves had crisped and turned brown while everything else stayed green. The following spring, I watched everything begin to bloom except the dogwood.

I dug the dogwood’s roots out and placed it in a yard waste bag. A sadness sunk in when I set the bag at the curb. I had placed a shade tree in the open sun, and I let the routine of watering it become tedious. Eventually, a magnolia shrub filled the space, a hardier variety that loved the June sun. It flowered white and released sweet notes. I hoped the gray-haired woman would enjoy the magnolia as much as the dogwood.

One morning, as I turned onto the thoroughfare, I caught a glimpse of a red bucket sitting on a retaining wall near the side of the road. The gray-haired woman pulled a crinkled plastic water bottle out of her bucket and fed it to a bed of wildflowers at the edge of an empty parking lot. Milkweed, coneflowers, and blue aster.

Another early morning in June, I saw her again, walking down the street holding her bucket filled with plastic water bottles. I pictured her returning to the bed of pink, orange, and blue where I had seen her before. A week later, I saw her pouring water from a scuffed Ice Mountain bottle onto a bright green hosta at the base of a telephone pole. By the Fourth of July, it was a regular occurrence to see her walking through our neighborhood with her red bucket.

The summer heat was exhaustive. Front yards baked into hues of yellow. She had short of a dozen water bottles in her bucket. The whole process probably took her at least forty five minutes, I imagined. She would fill the bottles at her sink, place them into her bucket, and walk through the neighborhood and down the street to the flowerbeds. She seemed to make the trip every morning. A few times I saw her down the street with her bucket at dusk. If she took more than one trip, she could be laboring up to two hours a day.

In August, I saw her working in a third flowerbed; this one at the foot of a vacant building with a faded “For Lease” sign. If a business occupied the space, a visitor would pass the bed on the way to the door. Being set back from the road, the bed was otherwise easily missed. She worked with a small shovel, digging into the dirt and pulling out what kept new growth at bay. Greens, yellows, and purples danced in a small bed next to a door that never opened.

When late August brought an unusually cool day, I saw her out walking. She didn’t have her bucket, but something was familiar. Her pace was slow, her strides contemplative. She carried herself the same way she did when she visited her flowerbeds. The only place she had to be was right there––unhurried, on her way down the street, while she tended to the plants, and as she returned home.

In the winter the plants wither, and the beds could be dismissed as dilapidated brick or a collapsing retaining wall. But each spring, she starts walking down the street again with her red bucket, returning to her plants in the forgotten flowerbeds. And once again, they bloom.

I slow down to look at the flowerbeds everytime I drive home now. I found a fourth bed, too. They all have her fingerprints–a mix of wildflowers and perennials flourishing in just a few square feet of space. The leaves, stems, and flowers made all the more beautiful by her devotion.