I showed her where. We cut the dead bush off at the ground first, and she worked the old root out with the shovel and a good deal of grunting. Mr. Pruett had told her to take out the old dirt, too, two or three bucketfuls, because it was full of salt, and to put fresh in. She carried it around back to the alley herself.
Then she started digging, and I let her go for a few minutes before I said anything, because she was so determined.
It was a terrible hole. It was about as wide as a coffee can and went straight down past her elbow.
“Vicki.”
“What.”
“You’re setting a fence post.”
She sat back on her heels and looked at it. She had dirt on her forehead. “It’s a hole.”
“It’s a well. Get up a minute.”
I went in the garage and came back with Dale’s yardstick. It still had his pencil marks on it.
“He did it the same way every time,” I said, “all eleven. Mr. Pruett told him once and he never changed it. The hole is twice as wide as the pot and not one bit deeper. A rose doesn’t want to go down, it wants to go out. So you fill some of that back in.”
She filled it back in. She widened it. I knelt beside her, the way I had knelt beside him, and it did not hurt the way I had expected. It only felt like something I knew how to do.
“Now tip it out of the pot. Easy. Scratch the roots loose with your fingers, they’ve been going in a circle. Now see this knob, down low, where the canes come out of the stump? That’s where it was grafted. Around here that sits an inch under the dirt, for the winters. Not at the top. Not three inches down. An inch.”
“How am I supposed to know an inch from down in a hole?”
“The way he did.” I laid the yardstick flat across the hole, edge to edge, like a little bridge. “That’s your ground. Now hold the bush so the knob is one finger below the stick.”
She held it. Her hands were shaking a little. I pushed the fresh soil in halfway, and we ran the hose in and let it go down, and filled the rest, and watered it again.
“Don’t I put the rose food in?” she said. “He sold me a little box.”
“Not today. Dale asked him the same thing. You don’t feed a rose the day you plant it. You make it go looking.” I heard myself and nearly laughed. “Six weeks. Then the box.”
“He said to water it every day for two weeks, since it’s summer.”
“Then you’ll be over here every day for two weeks.”
“I’m over here every day anyhow,” she said.
We spread the mulch two inches deep and pulled it back from the canes with our fingers so it would not hold the wet against them. When we stood up, our knees cracked at the same time, and Biscuit, who had watched the whole thing from the shade with his chin on his paws, thumped his tail on the grass.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.