The ficus I got from your funeral is looking horrible, cramped and diseased in the little pot with bamboo painted on the front. I take it out on the back porch and stare at it.
At least one leaf looks like it has just unfurled, so there is hope for this plant. I drill holes into a new pot, pack it with fresh potting soil, and work the root ball out of the old pot. I have to cut through the plant roots with the pointed end of a shovel.
Now the plant is in its new pot, hugging the side of my striped chair, right under the San Francisco poster. It's leaning at an odd angle, looks shocked to have had its longest roots hacked off, its diseased leaves cut. I hope it survives. Three years is too long to keep something so green and alive stuck in a body too small to contain it.
