Planter's Choice Bonsai Starter Kit
by Aaron Burch
Two weeks ago, I planted seeds for four different bonsai trees. Pinus Aristata, Delonix Regia, Jacaranda Mimosifolia, Picea Abies North America.
Two weeks before that—exactly one month ago today, as I write this—I received a mass email notifying me that I would no longer be able to access my office on campus. The English building, among others, would now be accessible by essential employees only. Until then, I still didn’t have Internet at my apartment; I was still going to my office on campus to teach remotely. I still felt some semblance of normal life, leaving my apartment 2-3x/week, going to my place of work, keeping something of a semiregular schedule.
A week before that, our governor issued a “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order, and two weeks before that, I was wrapping up my last class of the day, telling my students to have good rests of their weeks, have good weekends, I would see them all on Monday, unless… when a student raised his hand and said no, I wouldn’t, the University president had just announced that classes for the rest of the week had been cancelled, and when they resumed on Monday, would be delivered remotely.
Three weeks before that, it was my birthday. We were still allowed to go out, to congregate, to eat and drink in public with others. I went out for dinner to somewhere I’d never been before, I did a celebratory oyster shot for technically my first time, though I’d previously, but less officially, eaten plenty of oysters paired with plenty of alcohol.
Six months before, I moved out of my house and into an apartment by myself, and three weeks before that, I was driving across the country when I stopped in Utah and met Sammi, my biological half-sister.
Which is all an overly and perhaps unnecessarily timelined way of saying, two week ago, after at that point having been more or less quarantined for two weeks, I finally unboxed the four degradable planting pots and four expanding soil discs and four seed vials and four bamboo plant markers and one bonsai trimmer and the complete growing instruction guide from the bonsai tree kit that the only person I have yet met who I am blood related to, who I had met for the first time and had dinner with at a Corner Bakery in Orem, Utah, had sent me for my birthday. “I wasn’t sure what to get you,” she’d replied, weeks before, when I texted her that I had received the present. “But this looked interesting and it’s something I would love!” And, in fact, it did look interesting. And I loved it. One of those presents that you would never buy yourself, would maybe never even think to buy, would possibly never even know existed, but that feels perfect when received as gift. And then it became all the more perfect as circumstances locked me into my apartment with little else to do.
And now I’ve spent the last two weeks staring at those four little biodegradable pots. Watching for any change in growth since the previous day, since a few hours before, since the last time I got up and walked past them—when moving from chair to record player, from couch to bedroom, the long way from desk to kitchen, or just doing a little lap around my apartment because I am bored—I stopped to bend down and lean in close and stare. I’m trying not to overwater, trying not to overcare for them, but what else do I have to do, what else do I have to take care of? I check on them much much much more than I know is possible for them to have changed since the last time I checked on them. I like their almost-stasis, my focused staring as obsession. And sometimes—sometimes!—there is a little noticeable change. A seed has started to peek up out of the ground, or it’s already out of the ground and has uncurled itself a little since the night before, or it’s a little noticeably taller or more outstretched or just bigger. I know they’ll take an almost-forever to become anything, and by then who knows where I’ll live, who I’ll be. But I like watching these beginnings, seeing a little growth, a little change, a little progress.
Aaron Burch is the author of the memoir/literary analysis Stephen King’s The Body; the short story collection, Backswing; and the novella, How to Predict the Weather. He is the Founding Editor of Hobart and HAD.
