“Yes, pluck out some of the little ones. The bigger ones need breathing space. Survival of the fittest, you know.”

But if she was ripping out the weaklings, was it survival of the fittest or murder of the frailest? She looked at her grandmother again. She was over eighty and seemed pretty frail, but something had changed since her grandmother was in the greenhouse. She seemed more alert. Even her eyes had lost that vague look they always had. For the first time, Rose could see a resemblance to her mom.

“Ragged robin—funny name.” She began pulling out the weaklings. It was an oddly restful activity. She felt as if she were allowing the other ones to breathe a bit.

“Nothing funny about the plant,” Rosalinda replied. “The leaves make a fine tea, and their flowers are delicate and lovely. With any luck they’ll be in bloom by Christmas. Let others have those hideous poinsettia plants.”

“You don’t like them?”

“I loathe them,” Rosalinda snarled. “Their immodesty offends. Wanton showgirls!”

Rose almost giggled. She sneaked a look at her grandmother, who had a most determined expression in her eyes now. She continued thinning out the ragged robin. Within a few minutes she had finished. The notion of studying for the upcoming spelling games dissolved. They no longer had spelling tests but games where you did stuff like rearrange the letters in a word to get a new word, like “carouse” out of “discourage.”

“Is there something else I can thin out, Grandmother?”

Rosalinda looked up. The trace of a smile played across her face and something halfway between a snort and a chuckle escaped. “Try that seedling tray next to it—the love-lies-bleeding.”

And from there Rose went on to another table where there were more plants with names like heartsease, cupid’s dart, scarlet snowcaps. Rose felt as if she were walking through a poem, or perhaps the shadows of very old legends. Stories swirled about her. Cook came and brought tea and small cakes. The afternoon faded into evening and Cook came again, this time with two trays of food, but neither Rose nor her grandmother was particularly hungry. Rose had learned how to take the seedlings that had become “plantlings,” her grandmother’s word, and move them into larger pots. It was a delicate operation. “Always let some of the old soil cling to their roots,” Rosalinda instructed.

“Why is that, Grandmother?”

“Memory—dirt memory. Nothing comes clean into this world. It shouldn’t. Spick-and-span, pristine, perfect—ridiculous notions.” She had held up a young fern. “You see this fern here?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“Ferns are among the oldest plants on Earth; older than time, they are. Now just think if I had cleaned off all these roots. It would be as if I had sliced them from their history. From their great-great-grandmamma’s and grandpapa’s spores.”

“Spores?”