Korridorium

♫ Beguiled (and Lov­ing It) ♫

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I enter the cor­ri­dor between the herba­ceous peren­ni­als and the orna­men­tal trees. In our out­door area, plant enthu­si­asts can ful­fill almost any desire. From water lilies to bor­der peren­ni­als, our range of prod­ucts presents itself to them as vig­or­ous, bloom­ing, and brim­ming with sap and strength. Main­tain­ing such an exten­sive inven­tory is quite a Her­culean task for us gar­den cen­ter work­ers. Nev­er­the­less, dur­ing my intern­ship, I’ve often found time to observe, mes­mer­ized, how the plants find their buy­ers.

The cus­tomers stroll around, inspect­ing our offer­ings, and then at some point, some­thing clicks—a plant has found a new home and owner. Whether it’s some­thing chem­i­cal, pheromones per­haps, or a form of magic, I haven’t been able to fig­ure out yet. Home gar­den­ers and week­end war­riors may think they are the ones mak­ing the choice, but in truth, they have no con­trol over their pur­chase; they are entirely under the spell of the flow­ers, peren­ni­als, and orna­men­tal shrubs that impose them­selves upon them. And these plants are quite choosy. Granted, there are also cus­tomers absolutely immune to the sig­nals of botany, sim­ply grab­bing what’s on their shop­ping list. But they are rare.

A fat man, who has combed his remain­ing hair over his bald spot, pushes his cart through the pal­lets. His gaze wan­ders as he rolls leisurely past the princess tree. In his cart, he has a table­top foun­tain with a dragon tree and a radi­a­tor plant. If I were a plant, I’d make myself small and incon­spic­u­ous and let him pass by—anyone who wears a white T‑shirt stretched over a belly and cov­ered in stains of dubi­ous ori­gin isn’t going to care for his plants prop­erly.

He stops and exam­ines the princess tree. I watch him through the branches of a dap­pled wil­low. What does he want with our Paulow­nia? She looks a lit­tle hag­gard; a few of her leaves are brown­ing as if she’s suf­fer­ing from a fun­gal infec­tion. No one is inter­ested in her. For months, she’s stood unno­ticed on the pal­let next to the golden privet: a real dud. But the fatso actu­ally puts her in his cart. I hurry over imme­di­ately.

“Are you famil­iar with the care of a Paulow­nia? She is very tem­pera­men­tal.” That’s meant to scare him off. But the guy just grunts and pushes his cart along. I fol­low him.

“Oh, look. She’s sick. Wait, let me check our stock to see if I have another spec­i­men for you.” We don’t have one, I don’t even need to check, but I could cer­tainly palm off a north­ern catalpa on him; they’re often con­fused with the princess tree. But the fat bald guy shakes his head irri­ta­bly and snatches the plas­tic pot back out of my hands. He sets it next to his table­top foun­tain, casts a lovestruck glance at Paulow­nia, and leaves me stand­ing there.

“Excuse me,” I call after him, “that tree is already sold!” She belongs to me! I want to add, but I see the boss’s daugh­ter watch­ing me. She’s stand­ing by the sil­ver wil­lows with the hose.

The over­weight man turns toward me. I only have eyes for my Paulow­nia. She shakes her leaves and stretches to her full height. She wants to leave me. She wants to throw her­self at this slob in his greasy T‑shirt; she wants to be his and tram­ple every­thing that had devel­oped so ten­derly between us!

The boss’s daugh­ter approaches the tubby man: “Every­thing is fine with the lit­tle tree.” Then she turns to me. She’s always had an axe to grind with me: “I think our orchids need mist­ing again.” But I already have the large prun­ing shears in my hand. I’m not let­ting this fat pig take my Paulow­nia!

I lunge at him in a rage. After a brief scuf­fle and a few shrill screams for help from the boss’s daugh­ter, I am able to shove the man aside and find myself stand­ing before the treach­er­ous tree. With my hands on the grips, I open the hedge shears. Paulow­nia seems to recoil, her branches trem­bling; she seems to beg me not to take it to the extreme. She wants to make amends, to stay faith­ful to me for a life­time, to be at my ser­vice, to read every wish from my lips! Pah! She can’t fool me any­more…

Later, I learned that the “light­ning” that struck me in that moment and sent me hit­ting the floor was one of the stain­less steel water­ing cans for $94.99, which the boss’s daugh­ter smashed over my skull. The stunt earned me a painful lump, a mild con­cus­sion, and, of course, imme­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion. My Paulow­nia was gone, sold, by the time I came to. The fat guy had loaded her into his sta­tion wagon and dri­ven off. Because of the “unpleas­ant inci­dent,” they gave him the tree for free and deducted the price from my intern salary.

So, she offi­cially belongs to me now, right? After all, I paid for her. And I’m going to get her! Janine from the reg­is­ter, with whom I’d occa­sion­ally shared a secret smoke behind the green­house by the com­post bins, gave me the name and address of the fat cus­tomer. The boss had writ­ten them down in case there was a legal after­math.

Oh, yes. There will be an after­math! This time, I’m bring­ing the chain­saw…