By Jeff Hampton
Sandi crawled out from under the pile of shattered wood that a moment before was her checkout counter and looked up at the open sky above what had been the roof of her shop. And then, looking out past the twisted lumber that had been walls, she confirmed what she already knew: her plant nursery was gone.
The chance of a rare, freak December tornado had been forecast for several days, and that morning as the sky turned a sickly dark gray-green and the winds began to churn, the forecaster on the radio warned listeners to “stay indoors and stay tuned.” Sandi was out with Bud and Larry, her two employees, turning potted trees and shrubs on their sides and opening the doors and windows of the greenhouse to let the wind blow through, but when the hail started coming down hard, shredding plastic and breaking glass, Sandi shouted for everyone to take cover. Bud and Larry crawled under the plant tables while Sandi raced back to the office and dove under the counter just as the twister touched down.
Now, Sandi stumbled out through the debris-covered parking lot to examine the remains of her business. The scene would have been the same in the surrounding community had the tornado not lifted up off the ground almost immediately and moved on across the countryside. As it was, some neighboring businesses and homes had mostly minor damage, and some of that was caused by debris picked up from the nursery and dropped across town. A mile away, the Harmons found a potted maple tree sitting in their living room after crashing through their picture window. The Allens found a plant cart upside down on the roof of their car, and up and down Poppy Lane, there were assorted flats of flowers tossed into front yards and onto porches and roofs. There would have been actual poppies if they had been in season. Instead, they were mostly pansies and snapdragons.
While folks around town got busy cleaning up and making repairs, Sandi and her guys gathered the debris from her shop and greenhouses in one pile and the plant material in another. There was little plant life left on the grounds, and what they did find had been stripped of leaves or dirt or both. They put that in a pile for mulch.
The next day, Lloyd Harmon drove to the nursery with the maple tree hanging out of the trunk of his car.
“I believe this belongs to you,” he told Sandi.
“Oh, thanks, but you could have just kept it. Finders keepers and all that,” Sandi said, putting on a cheerful face. “Besides, there’s not going to be much traffic at a nursery with just one maple tree to offer.”
Lloyd looked around. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get things put back together once the adjustors take a look.”
Sandi just stared ahead without saying a word.
“You did call your agent, right?” he asked.
Sandi looked down at her tired, weathered hands.
“Oh . . . no . . . you mean . . . .”
Sandi raised her eyes and shook her head. And then she explained: Business had been tough over the past year with the pandemic and rising costs from short supply. Given a choice between paying for insurance and keeping her business open, she had put all her profit back into inventory.
“Everyone works hard to pretty up their homes and businesses, and so I tried to do my part and keep the color coming,” she said.
That evening, Lloyd called an emergency meeting of the Poppy Lane Neighborhood Association and laid out the problem. “So you see, we all have beautiful beds and landscaping because Sandi cut corners on her insurance.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do about that?” huffed Stan Hudson gruffly. “Any fool knows you gotta have insurance. That’s just a cost of doing business.”
“Come on Stan, it’s not that cut and dried,” said Trudy Witherspoon. “And besides, you’ve won ‘Yard of the Month’ more times than any of us, and you have Sandi to thank for that.”
“That’s true for all of us,” said Lloyd. “In fact, Sandi’s a big reason lots of folks come from the city to shop on our square and tour our neighborhoods. Tammy’s café and Conrad’s emporium may have good food and interesting buys, but it’s those window boxes and planters with their bright colors that get folks to pull up, park, and come in. Not to mention the folks who stop in and buy plants from Sandi to take home to the city.”
There was murmuring through the room as ideas were floated about collecting donations or having an auction or bake sale. But it was two weeks until Christmas and there just wasn’t time to pull it together.
“I have an idea,” said little Megan Harmon who had been sitting on the stairs listening.
“What’s that, Sweetheart?” asked her mother Jill.
Megan scrambled upstairs a moment and came back down carrying a potted poinsettia that was almost bigger than she was. “We can give our plants back to Ms. Sandi. We can give her some of our plants, and she can sell them to people who don’t have any.”
There was more murmuring and a few scoffs and snickers and a “how precious!” or two.
“Wait a minute,” said Lloyd. “Yes . . . yes, this is something we can do.”
“What do you mean?” snarled Stan.
“All of us have perennials that we’ve bought from Sandi over the years – good healthy plants that she guaranteed would do well if we tended them right. I don’t know about you, but everything we’ve bought over there has grown and prospered, mostly because Sandi got them started right. Well, it looks like our friend Sandi needs a new start of her own. What if each of us went home and looked at what we have, thinned out our beds a little bit, and gave the extras to Sandi? She could do what she does to help them grow strong roots and multiply, and by spring or early summer she’d have enough to begin selling and earning back some money to restock and get going again.”
“But where’s she going to put all the plants? Her greenhouse is gone,” someone asked.
Hector Villareal, who owned the hardware store, stood up. “I bet we can pull enough scrap lumber and glass from her place and all of ours to build a temporary greenhouse.”
Over the next few days, lumber and glass from houses and garages and even the nursery itself was gathered. The nails were pulled out, the lumber was measured and resawed, the glass was cleaned and the rough edges trimmed, and all was repurposed to create a greenhouse big enough to keep a small inventory of plants safe and warm through the winter.
When the greenhouse was ready, one person after another came with flowers and shrubs that they’d carefully dug up and repotted in whatever they could find. There were Shasta daisies and Black-eyed Susans, butterfly bush, hydrangea, goldenrod, coral bells, hostas, phlox, lupines, bee balm, columbine, and more. They were brought to Sandi planted in flowerpots, buckets, casserole dishes, pet bowls, and even old hub caps. Sandi received each one with gratitude and found a home for it inside the makeshift greenhouse.
“It’s crowded, but it’ll do just fine,” Sandi said one morning after receiving another delivery. She was backing out of the door and almost fell over Megan, who was standing there with her poinsettia.
“So, what have you got there Miss Megan?”
“It’s my Christmas flower. Don’t you remember . . . we bought it from you last year? Everyone else calls it a ‘point-settle’ but I call it a Christmas flower because of what it means.”
“And what does it mean?”
“The red leaves make a star like the one that shined in the sky over the stable in Bethlehem on the night that baby Jesus was born. And the red color reminds us of when he died for us and went back to heaven so we can be there too someday.”
Sandi looked closely at the plant. “The leaves are definitely red. Most people give up on them after the holidays and let them go green or just throw’em out.”
“We put it in the dark closet just like you told us to,” said Megan. “But now it’s time to share it.”
Sandi knelt down so she could talk to Megan face to face. “The plants in here need to rest during the winter so their roots can grow strong. But your Christmas flower is meant to be enjoyed now because it’s Christmas time. So, let’s have you take that one home where everyone can enjoy its beauty and you can share its meaning.”
Megan’s parents, who had been watching and listening from a distance, stepped forward.
“I don’t think you understand,” said Lloyd, who nodded at Megan.
“I didn’t bring it for you to put in the greenhouse with the others,” the little girl said. “I brought it for you to take home and put in your window.”
Sandi stood up and looked at Lloyd and Jill.
Jill explained: “We were out driving last night, looking at the Christmas lights, and we saw that you didn’t have any decorations, so Megan thought . . .”
Sandi sighed. “Most years I do all my decorating here at the nursery, but I got busy cleaning up and, well, there really isn’t a here to decorate this year.”
On Christmas Eve, the Harmons took the long way home after church to see the lights again. When they turned the corner onto Sandi’s street, Megan shouted “go slow” from the back seat, and then “Look!” as they came to the little house in the middle of the block. There, in the front window under a tall lamp was Megan’s Christmas flower. Only now it wasn’t just Megan’s; it was there for everyone to enjoy.