The Measure of a Garden
The roses were beautiful. Their petals draped in satin spirals as their deep crimson poked out of the verdant fields. Not only were they the envy of the garden, these roses were Otto's pride and joy. Each one meticulously placed, measured, watered, and tended to by his aged and calloused hands. The scars on his fingertips were testament to the time he spent endlessly agonizing over the precise measurements to get these perfectly postured flowers. His life stemmed and blossomed from these roses—the taller and fuller they grew, the taller and prouder he stood.
Unfortunately, Otto's pride was where he often fell short, making him quick to assess his neighbors' lives and characters based on their gardens. Thus, years of this pattern turned him into a bitter man who judged all of those around him from behind his picket fence atop his rose petal pedestal.
However, there was no one Otto despised more than Ruth, his next door neighbor, who (in his opinion) was filled with youthful naivete despite her old age, much like her wildflowers that tilted their heads to the grass below. Ruth's flowers hardly caught the eyes of a passerby, nor were they photographed. They were insignificant and never looked at twice except for Otto who would peer out his window each morning to see her greeting her flowers, pluck a stray leaf or two, then head back inside. Nothing was calculated, studied, or painstakingly pulled. He was disgusted with the little effort, if any at all, that she put into these flowers because he knew how beautiful they could become. On multiple occasions, Otto considered offering his advice to Ruth but always withheld out of the fear of them blooming into ones more alluring than his own. Despite his ostentatious nature, Ruth was left unbothered, nursing her flowers with nothing more than coaxing words as Otto watched begrudgingly. It was not until an overgrown weed from Ruth's garden stretched its parasitic fingers over to Otto's lawn that he took matters into his own hands, marching to her door and pounding his fist against the wood. In a heated argument, Otto's mouth flew with anger and spit spewed from his lips. His rage blinded his senses, so all he remembers from this confrontation was Ruth pushing past his heaving shoulders, yanking the weed from its roots, shoving it into his open hands, and closing the door firmly in his face. Since that interaction, Otto had made it his mission to ensure Ruth's flowers always wilted in the shadow of his own.
Months passed, spring came, and the sun beat down on Otto's neck. He tilted his head to the sky in disdain before turning back towards his roses. Their petals still glistened in the sun, but they now had thin dull edges that curled outwards in an ugly brown. Otto grazed one of the stems in a soft sorrow, feeling its brittleness. A wretched look crossed his face as he once again looked towards the dry and barren sky and saw nothing but blue. Four weeks had already gone by since the last rainfall, and despite the cheery laughter of the children on sidewalks, Otto tore through his elaborate gardening manuals in restless agony, searching for a solution.
What made him angrier was watching Ruth continue with her routine, endlessly checking her dying flowers that withered into the ground. She worked for nothing. He could see she did not care whether they lived or if they died and he decided he despised her entire being for she was too lazy to change her regimen.
"The rain will come." Otto heard Ruth cheerily tell their neighbor one day as he exhaustively dug trenches for his new irrigation system. "No need to worry. It'll all work out—it always does."
Otto nearly ripped the $500 pipes out in utter rage hearing her words, but instead clutched his sun hat in a silent fury. Here he was, crouching in his new fertilizer with caked fingernails, listening to this woman toss her garden aside as if it were no better than the garbage cans that were picked up every Saturday. Nevertheless, Otto bit his tongue, swallowed his sour words, and let his sweat and bitterness water the roses as he labored on.
Ruth's eyes shifted towards the groveling silhouette of who she knew was Otto slaving away over his new irrigation system. She saw the clean-cut cardboard boxes arrive on his doorstep the day before and could not help but laugh at their rigid resemblance to him. She never understood Otto's obsession over his and her own garden, but she did not let it haunt her, shrugging off his incessant judgment and hostile stares—her garden was good and arguably pleasing enough for the amount of work she put in, or rather the lack thereof. As Ruth turned back toward the door to her house, she glimpsed at her fading garden. In a transient moment, the scales fell from Ruth's eyes and she saw her stems' shriveled appearance, almost akin to used cigarettes, and the petals that had once held life were now ancient scrolls that bore nothing more than a story. Ruth's mind couldn't help but wander to their confrontation months ago and recalled his brief advice masked in anger, "You would rather have a grave and call it beautiful than lift a finger and watch it grow." Maybe Otto was right. Maybe her negligent behavior was the ugliest part of her wilting bed, and maybe—just maybe—her absent efforts were worth criticizing.
Ruth went inside and watched Otto from the window in quiet reflection. Admittedly, a twinge of desire and quiet envy surfaced as she recalled the stunning beauty of what used to be flourishing in Otto's gardenbeds. She considered pruning her stems, even looking for the gloves she once owned. But the thought passed and did not stop her from turning through questions. If rain was coming, why should she interfere? Why would she consider purchasing $500 worth of technology to control the most beautiful part of the natural world? To what extent would sacrificing her life for her garden be worth all that time and effort?
From that day forward Ruth observed Otto with a genuine curiosity and bewilderment as he worked and worked and worked. When she would leave in the morning for her daily coffee walks and return with an empty cup in hand, he was there. On Sundays, she took the bus downtown to visit her daughter in the city, coming back late in the night, and he was still there in his pitiful, slouched squat over his plot of flowers that continued to retreat into the soil.
"I'm concerned for him," Ruth said as she called her daughter weeks later, "I promise you I'm not crazy. He has not moved. Every day, all day, it's just him and those stupid, stupid roses… I mean yes, they have grown a little… Yeah, they're maybe a bit more red than before, but still drooping… No, exactly. No garden is worth all this."
Minutes earlier, Otto had watched the mailman drop Ruth's package onto his doorstep in a rush, disappearing before Otto could stop him. Reluctant but resigned, Otto climbed the steps of Ruth's house with the package tucked beneath his arm. Just as he raised his hand to knock, he hesitated, letting it fall to his side. From behind the door, Ruth's muffled voice drifted through the wall.
"No garden is worth all this trouble."
His gut twisted, both out of rooted abhorrence and twisted apprehension. What did she know? What gave her the right to ridicule his lifestyle and choices when she sat idly by and actively turned her face away from her field of perish? Nevertheless, Otto tapped on her door hesitantly and faced the inevitable. Ruth answered, her eyes widening in shock as he handed her the package.
"Mornin'. Mailman dropped this off at my address by accident."
"Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you."
Ruth said nothing as Otto stared at her, but a mutual look of understanding passed between them. Otto nodded in an implied "you're welcome" before heading into his home and shutting the door behind him. With a heaving sigh he sank into his couch, relieved his aching joints, and entered a trance of reevaluation. The past three weeks he exerted himself into the rosebed, weeding, fertilizing, and watering over and over and over again. And yet, his delicate treasures still cowered under the heat of the sun. He had not visited his sister in a month now, and his friends from chess continued to call him every Wednesday asking where he had been. His refrigerator lacked produce or any real food, and his hired cleaner had not come in weeks because his house was practically vacant. Was it worth all this trouble? In great fatigue and a subtle pang of remorse, Otto closed his weary eyelids and drifted off to sleep, listening to familiar, rhythmic taps dance on his window.
When Otto awoke he routinely trudged over to his kitchen sink to retrieve a coffee mug, and as he rinsed it he looked up and out the window above. His mouth dropped open and he gasped audibly. Through a blurred, glasses-less view, Otto squinted to see droplets dotting the pane in an array of crystals. Without a word, he abandoned his coffee and rushed outside to be greeted with the wet air sweeping across his skin. Tears of happiness almost escaped from his eyes as he felt relief take its place on his aching and hunched shoulders. His socks grew damp as he stood in the grass, filled with awe and perplexity. He looked to his left at Ruth's garden, and saw the sad browns weighed down under the rain. Now, he pitied her because no amount of rain could make her flowers grow again.
Over the next few days, rain continued to fall, and Otto watched with steady, unspoken solace. His roses began to straighten their spines, and the petals were soft to touch. Ultimately, Otto thought, Ruth was right. His garden was not worth all that work: he had sacrificed his life and his relationships for some flowers that repeatedly refused his touch, and it bruised his pride to realize the fate of these roses was never truly in his hands.
Ruth, however, left her house after the period of rain to observe her own garden and the puddles that gathered where her petals had once been. She could see the soil had darkened beneath the wilted brown, but stopped short of life—nothing had changed. Her flowers were dead and, if anything, they looked worse than before the rain had come. She kicked the dirt in frustration, but deep down she knew her lack of effort tended to this grave that rested before her. Ultimately, Ruth thought, Otto was right. She did not lift a finger, and expected her flowers to grow, but now here they were—reduced into the dried out mulch she had planted them in months before.
In the end, his garden could not flourish through work alone, but nor could hers grow solely on expectation.