I reached down, grabbed the plastic stems in my right fist and yanked them right out of the hard ground.

The cheap wire stems folded in half as I stuffed them into the bottom of the black trash bag.

Next to the stone were three older plastic bunches I had left there over the past three years, faded gray by the sun and caked with dried brown dirt.

I pulled every last one of them out of the ground, tearing the fake plastic leaves right off their wire stalks.

I cleared a three-foot circle of ground around the nameless stone until there was nothing left but bare dirt and broken grass roots.