When I was little, I had a garden basket hanging outside my window, full of lantana. It’s a small flower, held together in bunches, and mine were a bright gold that seemed to gaze back at you when you stared at them. “Look at these petals,” It would say. “They demand your attention.”

I’ve always been obsessed with baseball. When I was a bit older, my mother worked at a Greenhouse. I would play baseball by myself, collecting rocks from the gravel road outside, and hit them with a broomstick. There was a small path that, though in reality was a circle, looked to me like the basepaths of a major league stadium. There was a fence, what seemed like miles away to me, that had a line of flowers along it’s edge, and ivy growing from the top. It was my own outfield garden.

As I grew a bit older, my friends and I would make the long walk from the middle school to the greenhouse. We usually walked with this girl named Alice, who had hair that reminded us of the petals of a rose. One day, my friend picked up a rose, and handed it to her. “It’s beautiful!” she said. “Just like you.” my friend replied. A week later, he moved, and she stopped walking with us.

The first girl I ever dated, loved the color violet. On our 6 month anniversary, I gave her a violet rose, with a note telling her how much I loved her. She said she had never loved anyone so much before. A week later, she asked, “But did you see the petals wilting?”

The second girl I ever dated, smelled like flowers on our first date, and I wanted nothing more than to plant a garden.