How Lovely Are Your Branches

(A Flash Fiction Draw Challenge Extra)

by Mike Mayak

(December 31, 2024)

Author’s Note:

When I finished the annual draws for the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge this year, there were three draws left over on the list; A Paranomal Story, a Greenhouse, and a Cellphone. Usually, I just slip them into next year’s draw list but the idea for a story banged into my head when I saw them.

So here’s a New Year’s Eve story; a Paranormal story set in a Greenhouse, involving a Cellphone.

Happy reading! —–jeff, a.k.a. mike

We always have our Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Pelzer’s, right on the edge of town. They had an old farmhouse with a big garden and a big greenhouse out back that was about as big as a double-wide trailer a friend of mine lived in.

Afternoon of December thirty-first, New Year’s Eve and Grandpa had called me over to his place to “help out.” It was fairly warm for December in Kansas and so I was in my sweats from Gym Class as I bicycled over, gloomy about how school was going to be starting up again in a few days.

Grandpa Pelzer met me at the greenhouse and ushered me inside. It was big but felt cramped inside. There were long wooden tables extending the length of the greenhouse along the walls and one right down the middle. The tables were full of planters, some in use and there were bigger planters and a lot of gardening equipment underneath the tables. It all smelled weirdly green with the scent of garlic and some other plants I couldn’t identify. And it felt almost like summer in there.

This is where I grow the Christmas trees,” Grandpa said as we walked down to one corner of the building. “I usually put the one in the living room and give one to old Mrs. Plunkett and one to the Retirement Center downtown. But I have this one here and it needs to be pulled out of its planter. I shouldn’t have waited this long.”

On top of one of the tables was a plastic flowerpot with a small fir tree growing out of it, about half as big as I was and I was sixteen. Its branches were dotted with little multicolored bulbs that looked like little glass ornaments.

I pulled out my phone and was about to take a picture when Grandpa waved it away.

“When I was your age we didn’t stop to take pictures every two minutes,” he said.

“No, because you would’ve had to run inside and grab your camera!” I laughed.

“Ah, the early Seventies,” Grandpa said. “Terrible time. Here, help me with this.”

He tossed me a pair of dirty gardening gloves and I fumbled with putting on the gloves and stuffing my cellphone in my pocket at the same time while Grandpa tipped the pot over on its side.

“Those ornaments look like they’re growing right out of the tree,” I said.

“They are,” Grandpa said. “Help me pull it out of the pot.”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing the top of the tree. Grandpa braced himself and started pulling the pot as I pulled at the tree.

“Tradition…UMMPFH! Says you toss out a live tree…OOOMPH! On New Year’s Eve….UNNNGH! But these trees can’t be…UNNNNNGH! Still planted in dirt on New Year’s Eve…OOPPP!”

The little tree popped out of the pot in a shower of dirt and Grandpa and I both landed on our butts. The little tree landed on top of me. I pushed it off and stared; the roots were little striped candy canes.

“My gosh,” I said. “These things ARE growing out of it,” I said.

“Yeah,” Grandpa said. “But it’ll shrivel up now that it’s New Year’s Eve. That’s why I cut the bases off the trees I give away.”

“Where did you get these, anyway?” I asked, standing up.

“Special seeds,” Grandpa said, waving off any attempt to help him up as he braced himself on a table and stood. “A guy I know supplies me with them. Basically peppermint pine cones. He’d sell them to a candy store except they have seeds in them. He says he bred them for years to have them…”

There was a sudden rattling noise, like someone dropping marbles on a tin shed.

“I missed one!” Grandpa said. “Quick, help me find it! I shouldn’t have moved everything when I…”

In the opposite corner behind a flat planter on the ground with tall brown grass growing out of it I could make out one of the little Christmas trees, this one shaking violently.

“This one’s starting early this year,” Grandpa said, “but I guess it’s New Year’s somewhere.”

As I watched, the multicolored little bulbs began to pop of the tree and started bouncing around on the floor; obviously not glass, bouncing higher with each bounce.

Grandpa rushed over and closed the greenhouse door.

“Quick!” Grandpa said. “Grab them! If those things get out, it’ll be a disaster!”

We started chasing the bouncing bulbs around the greenhouse and I managed to grab a few of them, one of them when it almost bounced up my nose.

“What do I do with these?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Grandpa said. “You grab them, they lose their momentum. The crumble up pretty quick. If they get out and drive themselves into the ground they’ll grow huge. And their seeds will be huge, and their seeds will be even bigger and the trees will be even bigger…”

“And on and on…” I said amazed I believed it all. But Grandpa and I were running around a greenhouse on New Year’s Eve lunging after bouncing, living Christmas ornaments.

It took a little bit but finally we were done. I had mine stuffed in my pockets, Grandpa had taken off one of his gloves and filled it with the bulbs.

“We got ‘em all,” Grandpa said. “Now we…”

There was a CLINK from overhead. We glanced up in time to see the last of the bulbs zipping overhead through a broken pane in the glass, landing on the ground outside.

“I got it!” I said, running for the door.

I was outside when I saw Grandma and Grandpa’s big, furry dog sniffing the bulb on the ground.

“Ralphie! No!” I hollered.

Too late. Ralphie happily chomped down the bulb, then bounded away.

Grandpa walked up behind me.

“He…he ATE it!” I said.

“No harm done,” Grandpa said. “They’re edible.”

For the next few months, Ralphie’s farts smelled like peppermint.

—end—

NOTE: Actually had to really revise and trim this to make it shorter and add reference to cellphone (I’d forgotten in handwritten draft!) as well as re-set it in the present day, not the 1970s as I originally planned. —-mike