TRANSPLANTS

The strips of cloth tied to the trees had once made sense. She had torn the strips from leftover fabrics in Grandma Faith's piece boxes, and the calico prints had been color coordinated to specific trees. For instance, this frayed cotton strip with a white background and inane green frogs might be tied to a redbud. Or it might be tied to a young white oak, for she had been so sure she'd remember each pattern that she hadn't written them down. But it probably meant dogwood, the white for the large white sepals that brought so many smiles in spring, and the green hopping frogs for the leaves that had just within the past few weeks emerged as bright red and then glided peacefully to earth. "Why don't you just prize your wallet open and buy some shrubs?" Gilda had asked. "You could get any color you wanted, bright red or purple. Them's just old junky things you'll dig up out there." But dogwood leaves were the most perfect leaves she had ever seen, so she had tied strips to the smaller ones instead of spending her money on buddleias or Joseph's coat or weeping cherries. The fabric strips marked trees she thought would be suitable for transplanting into her yard, small enough so that the shock of being dug up wouldn't kill them, but substantial enough so they'd be more than sticks with merely a leaf or two hanging forlornly come next summer. But Jan had believed that redbud leaves were perfect, too, and white oak leaves with their smooth ripples. So she had tied and tied, and now the bright strips shouted against the dull brown the woods had become: brown trunks and branches; brown leaves dangling, brave and shriveled, by a useless petiole; brown dead weeds, and even the mushrooms, spotty as though they'd been dropped here and there, were sad shades of brown. The wind picked up, and the floating strips were so many tongues sticking out at her. Jan stood at the woods' edge, leaning on her shovel, trying to reimagine spring. Jan always had tea with Charlotte on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Charlotte was small-boned and fragile like she'd shatter if you looked