The hosta has pips that look like a dog's dick, some already unwrapping edges showing the lighter green that will border the broad leaves. Its roots are a tangle, a Medusa mane pressing against the cardboard of the box, now stowed on the back seat.

A large plant, a centerpiece, it will be five feet across by the first of June. The rootball is big and heavy. It was a struggle digging it up, a close bodied affair of prying on the shovel and the fork, of lifting and pulling, hands meeting in the muck, shoulders rubbing over the box. She is breathing hard, more than pleased, radiant while wiping her hands on the flaps of her muddied shirt. No ring. The shirt is a man's oxford, oversized, buttondown collar askew, bra strap showing.

"I owe you."

"You don't."

"I owe you big time."

"Kinky sex?" A smile on the gardener's face.

She chuckles, flustered. "Thank You, Thank You so much."

Her car eases into the drive, she is timidly waving out the window. The gardener is still smiling. "Come again."

Under the thin cover of the Amelanchiers' foliage the magic of the shade garden is a slow version of the parable of the fish and the loaves. Multiplication; hostas like it here. Spring is cold and often wet, summer foggy, fall briefly glorious. Winter is for dormancy. Clumps form slowly at first. Give them a few years, pick off the slugs, mulch, fertilize. A season comes when the garden is a riot of broad leaves, drifts of flowers everywhere. Division; it's time for transplanting until one runs against the physical limitations of space and effort willingly allocated. Then come the distribution part of the parable. You have to throw them out or give them away. Or trade. Try social media.

A car inches up the drive, the gardener recognizes the face of the driver. Holy cow, a repeat customer. Why, hello! How did your hosta fare in your digs? It did great, it's beautiful, and huge! Wonderful, lets meet its future neighbor. She's ecstatic, she knows what she is looking at, a Blue Angel cultivar, some of its puckered leaves already formed and showing their bluish tint. But today's trade will be hard work. The gardener wants to keep half the clump, it will be split in two, she must help; her reward will be the other half. Not a problem, she says and fetches a heavy pitchfork from her trunk.

When hiring college students for his summer landscaping assignments the gardener favors the once-called weaker sex. Boys are usually stronger, but they wear combat boots to the garden and bitter experience has shown him that they tend to be careless in the location of their footprints. Girls wear sneakers and tiptoe around seedlings to the great relief of lady-bosses watching from the remote shelter of living room curtains. Then, girls smell nice, although the occasional mix of perfume and bug spray is enough to make one gag and confine his tasks to upwind locations.
Digging up a large hosta is a job, dividing it is a hard struggle. Each pip is a plant with its set of roots and as multiple pips form, all these roots add up to a quasi inextricable tangle within the soil. Of course one might hack at it with a spade and a sledge, but that process is noisy and inelegant. Not to mention the severing of many needed roots. The gardener and his returning customer will do it the proper way by using two pitchforks prying against each other with sizable expenditure of energy. The woman smells nice, just a little sweaty, no hint of cologne, bug spray or worse soap, a hint of familiarity with the perils of gardening on schedule: spring mosquitoes love the smell of soap. And she helps with the replanting of the divisions that are to remain on the premises.

Sitting in her car, key in the ignition, she repeats her 'I owe you big time' line. The gardener holds his tongue and answers kindly, "don't worry about it." She waits an instant and offers "how about dinner?" No problem with that. Next Saturday night, seven o'clock, at her basement apartment across from the School of Horticulture's main gate, he can't miss it.

He couldn't have. Next to the steps and in front of the window there is a small space, a planter more than a garden, a profusion of tulips and violets, and a gaudy dwarf in a corner, of course. The door is open, she is in a vertically striped buttondown dress setting a table just below the window. He steps down and walks in and offers his California Cabernet. "Great, I made us a roast," she says, "I love your tie..." A red tie on a denim shirt, it looks right over his faded Carhartt jeans. He compliments her on her street garden, can't wait to see her backyard with the hostas. She's fixing gin and tonics, hands him one for a toast, turn him to the window, points to the gate across the Avenue. Near the drive he sees them now on each side of a marker the side of a tombstone set in a small circular garden where tulips and violets and annuals front drifts of daffodils. His hostas are in good company, he is flattered. "I teach there," she says, "so they let me plant what I want around the marker; it's inscribed with the name of the school's founder, my husband. He died three years ago." The gardener is speechless, offers platitudes. "That's alright," she says," we knew it was coming, I was a student when we married. He taught me everything I know."

They sit down with another gin and tonic and he tells her of a long gone marriage. They eat and drink and chat about plants and the botanical gardens they have visited, the places they would like to go. They are a little drunk by then and she asks if he can keep a secret. Of course he can. "After my husband died I kept his ashes in this room, below the flowers in the window for a cycle of seasons" she says. "By then, the marker was up and I began working the soil for the garden. That's when you gave me that first hosta; I thought about what you said, that jibe about kinky sex. The next morning at dawn I went to set the plant by the marker and I took my husband along. There was no one around. He is there now, under the hosta." The gardener asks her to stand and gives her a long, warm hug, she grabs his tie and opens her bedroom door. "Only one thing," she says, "I can't ever move."

THE END

A/N: This story is dedicated to @SilviaKrpatova who does quite well in the odd genre.