Grandma Ruth used to say Greenville soil would grow a doorknob if a person set it in straight and watered it.

I had two bushes planted when Helen Vance came down her driveway carrying a hand trowel and a Mason jar of water.

Helen, my neighbor of forty years, hadn’t come anywhere near me since the rumors about me leaving.

“You’re setting them in too deep,” she said.

“I’m setting them the way the tag says to.”

“The tag never met your grandmother.” She knelt down in her good slacks and turned my second rose a quarter turn without asking.

We worked for a while with nothing but the sound of roots pulling free.