Lovely June

MONDAY MUSINGS - My serendipitous meeting with a plant lady

I re-potted one of my plants today – it’s been something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, as it has outgrown its pot and needed a good top up of soil.

My cat and my plants are the closest things I have to children, and I take my role as their caregiver very seriously!

Somewhere in the re-potting, I was reminded of how this plant came into my care, and I found myself thinking about June.

It was June 2018 when I got this plant. The sun was shining as summer surrounded us, but I truly felt darkness deep within my soul that June. I was in my second year of my nursing degree and pretty close to having to step back 6 months into the cohort behind me. My life had just been turned upside down by heartbreak, as my partner had just left our home and left me feeling like I may be facing some level of financial ruin. It was an indescribable low point for me.

Newly single, and living in a home I could no longer afford (Ps. I still live there!) I was determined to maintain some speck of stability and normality – that would get me through to my final year of my nursing degree. Making my home feel like a home felt really important to me at that time, focusing on making it more me, having fallen into a space of prioritising someone else’s happiness for some time.

I had bagged myself a set of storage baskets for free on Facebook market place – determined to make this home a haven on little to no budget. I picked up my freebie and proudly loaded them into the boot of my car. As I drove along the road, I noticed a house with a table of plants for sale outside. In full on homemaking mode, naturally I had to stop. As I perused the tables green offerings, an elderly lady walked up the garden path to greet me. In all honesty there wasn’t a great selection of plants, nothing I really wanted – but as I got talking to the lady who lived there, something drew me to her – she was so warm and welcoming and genuinely interested in me. I sensed her isolation and possible loneliness – that she had jumped on the opportunity to have someone to talk to and genuinely praised the moment that I had stopped at her doorstep. I sensed the pounds and pence that she received for her plants and cuttings paled in comparison to the gain she got from the human interaction she got from those who stopped to peruse her table of plants.

Her name was June.

She immediately approached me with her sales pitch, her silvery white hair framing her weathered face. She had tartan gardening gloves on, and her glasses hung from a chain around her neck. She talked me through the potted plants displayed on her wooden table. I praised her for her hard work and she seemed so grateful.

Eight years later the spider plant and Lavender that I paid June £1.50 each for are still going strong. So, I guess she talks the good talk, and she deserved the praise.

I can’t quite explain it, but there was something serendipitous about my meeting June that day. I instantly warmed to her, and I think she did to me. She wanted to know all about my life, who I was, where I lived, what I was doing here. And somehow, I felt safe to tell her. Maybe it’s just me, but I definitely felt during my nursing degree I had this urge to learn more about people, just generally. To understand them, to hear their stories, to continuously broaden my knowledge. But I think somewhere in the training, or maybe it’s the calling? You just sense vulnerability in people and have this urge to support and nurture. I felt that strongly with June in our brief interaction.

I told June I was going through a hard time, and she looked at me with such a maternal supportive look, like she wanted to bundle me up. I told her I was training to be a nurse, and she honestly beamed with pride. I told her my ‘hard time’ might mean I take longer to finish my degree – as I was facing having to go back 6 months as I had to take some time off and had got behind with my placement hours, but I was going to try really hard to make it up and stay with my cohort.

She put her hand on my forearm and gave it a squeeze. I felt her warmth.

“You’ll do it” she said, seemingly so sure. “You just put your head down girl and you’ll do it.”

She was right. I did do it.

As I turned to leave, clutching my new plants, lovingly grown by June, somehow, I didn’t want it to be goodbye. I suddenly felt protective of June. I asked her if she’d like to go for coffee one day, and she honestly looked delighted. She said she didn’t drive, and I told her I would pick her up – I knew where she lived now! It was a strange moment of trust between two strangers.

I gave June my phone number – the landline of course, because I knew that’s the way she would operate! We set a date to meet, and I left, plants in tow and my Facebook marketplace freebies – ready to make my house more of a home. My interaction with June had given me a wonderful moment of distraction and I honestly revelled in the fact that I think I gave June a moment of human interaction and friendship that she needed too.

June rang me on the day to cancel our date – she was very apologetic but forgot she had an appointment to go to.

As part of my separation – I soon lost the landline too (The only bill in his name!). And subsequently all further means of contact with June. I couldn’t even tell you what the new landline number is – and I can’t see myself ever giving it to another soul again, but sadly we never did go to coffee, and I don’t know if June is even still alive.

But she is alive in my memory – every Sunday when I water my plants, I genuinely think of her when I get to June’s plant.

Now freshly re-potted – that plant is June’s legacy, and how lovely to have such a strong memory of a kind soul who deeply touched me, in a brief encounter with a stranger, in one of my darkest hours.