You may have thought you were buying flowers with your economic stimulus check, but what you really spent the money on was gasoline. Look at a graph of retail gasoline prices for 2008. What you will see that the spike in gas proces very closely followed the distribution of economic stimulus checks. I wonder if it's just a coincidence.
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Flowers From Uncle Sam
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By the time my stimulus check arrived in the mail, my credit-card bill—the one with which I bought only groceries—had ballooned beyond the $1,800 I'd received from Uncle Sam. I could part with the idea of getting new kitchen plates, bath towels and sheets. But, without question, I knew I had to get the flowers.
With the check barely in the bank for a day, I drove to the nearest Home Depot, got the biggest cart I could find and loaded up: impatiens, wavy petunias, hardy ground cover with variegated leaves that promised to come back next year. The damage wasn't too bad: I'd spent just under $100.
As soon as I got home and unloaded my goods from the car, I pulled on my gardening gloves, got down on my knees and began to plant. The earth was dry and tough. I had to push down hard with my shovel to dig holes big enough to contain the plants. But it finally gave way and, within a few hours, my mission had been accomplished.
Later that night, as I put away the dishes in the cabinet above the sink, I avoided looking at their chipped edges. Instead, I thought of the pretty ruffled edges of my petunias waving in the setting sun.
Heubeck lives in Baltimore.
© 2008
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