Privacy Plant | Mindy Morgan Avitia | Fiction & Nonfiction Contest Winner - Summer 2025

We said “I do,” under an arch twisted with Star Jasmine. Her vines wrapped around a metal trellis, twisting, hugging, clinging to the flimsy aluminum. She didn’t mind attaching herself to something so fragile, her tangled vines held up the arch with softness. It was a spring afternoon in Austin. The plant’s small white flowers respectfully declined our invitation. We didn’t mind. The Jasmine’s deep, rich greens were a welcome contrast to my laced white dress and his yellow tie.

“You may now kiss the groom,” our quirky officiant pronounces. Omar kisses me with a dip as we hope I don’t fall hard on the cool earth below us.

A gentle, cool wind blows, and the Jasmine sways to the sound of “All You Need is Love,” as we walk down the aisle, married. As she clings to the wobbly arched trellis, her wisdom knows love is not all you need.

Each Spring, when the winds of warmer weather come to Austin, the city wakes up. For nonlocals, it’s hard to imagine the city’s excitement over warmer weather. We forget that summer’s aggressive sunshine and drought are a few short weeks away. Even the celebrities of SXSW come for their brisket and photo ops. The highways are colored with flowers, blooming wild and free.

There’s magic in an Austin spring. It’s filled with hope and promise. Art and music, and good food are eaten under Live Oak trees. We don’t get too many days where you can sit in the sun with a cool breeze and a beer and contemplate the life you’re ready to make.

Six years later, Omar and I were in The Home Depot at the start of another Austin Spring. Our youngest was strapped to my body, newly born and witnessing her first season of gentle breezes and bluebonnets. Omar approached with a cart filled with greenery and hope. Herbs, native plants, vining plants, perennials, annuals, soil, mulch, and gardening tools crowded the cart while our oldest daughter danced around it. It’s vivid orange grates spilling with leaves. 

“Look at all these plants, mommy.” She says, unable to contain her excitement.

I look up at Omar, I feign a smile. I agree to buy just the Star Jasmine. The Butterfly Bush, Agave pups, and vibrant annuals can wait another season—if the rest survive it.

When we’re home, we put the Jasmine plants outside in their plastic pots under the shade of our roof. There was a lot to do before we could make them a permanent fixture in our small backyard. Not to mention the kids needed lunch, and naps, and time to play and be. For the rest of the week, we checked on the Jasmine plants, price tags still stuck to them. We’d water them with pride. We are plant people now. We’d say as water flowed out of their flimsy plastic trellises onto our concrete porch.

All of this caretaking reminded me of home. Aunt Elizabeth is a plant person—a green thumb from birth. Her home and yard are filled with lush greenery. They’re happy plants as old as me, towering over the art and sculptures of her small coastal home. She lives on the Jersey Shore, where my childhood started and ended. She cares for her flower beds and shrubbery like the mother of a toddler. Their existence alone is a wonder. The attention, love, and sheer pride she gives her plants are enough to inspire even the most egregious of plant killers.

As a kid, I’d follow my aunt through her small garden of tiger lilies and wildflowers. She’d tend to the plants, talking, watering, pruning, whatever they needed; she provided. She cares for everyone this way, thoughtful and fierce. We have the same blood, I thought, so maybe I can harness the power of her green thumb. But I wasn’t born a caretaker.

Plants have always died in my company. They’ve withered, drowned, burned, and frozen. I’ve tried, in nearly every season of life, to tend to plants. At least three herb gardens have been built and broken under my watch. I’ve hired and rehired gardeners, landscapers, and friends to help me understand the ways of these mystical beings. I was convinced that motherhood would lead me to a path of green thumbery. If I can keep a human alive, then obviously I can keep a plant alive, I thought.

But of course, humans and plants are not the same. Humans move with us. Even babies cry for milk and sleep, and love. Their infant screams demand an immediate call to action, a remedy in real time. Plants sit still on their windowsills and in their pots, waiting for the rain, or sun, or person to give them what they need.

“Is this where we’re going to live for the next 30 years?” I ask Omar as we’re signing the mortgage documents at our first home closing. Three years ago, I cared for myself with frozen pierogies, boiled rice, and 10-hour workdays. And now I was a homeowner.

“I’m not moving any time soon,” he said, signing his name on the line next to mine.

I believed him. We became a family in that home. We planted rosemary and pink muhly. We turned a shed into an office. We lived and loved and laughed. Just like those signs in a white baby boomer’s home.

“You know, you can sell your house for a 250% profit.” A friend tells me over coffee. She’s also a real estate agent, and I trust her. I sip my coffee and wonder what is more important: more money or more peace.

Money was the answer. After all, American culture demands more. More house, more yard, more ambition. And it never asks if we have the time, strength, or care to keep it all alive.

“Is there ever such a thing as enough?” I ask my husband. I am earnest in the question.

“Maybe not for you,” he laughs while I don’t.

We sold our small home and left for bigger, better an hour outside of Austin.

“Why do you need all of this space?” an expat friend asks as I show her our new, 2500 square foot home on an acre of land over Zoom.

I don’t respond, but bile collects in my throat. I push it down and show her the Quartz countertops and 8-burner stovetop. I pretend the frozen pierogies and 10-hour workdays were just stepping stones to these luxuries I never cared about.

The plants in New Braunfels are breathtaking. The city is home to two freshwater rivers, the Guadalupe and the Comal. Their cool waters house cypress trees and cool purple water hyacinths along their banks. Live Oak and Cedar trees line the city’s rolling hills, towering over limestone canyons. These plants have been here for centuries. These plants watched the German settlers lay their claim to land that wasn’t theirs. They wilted in the sun as Texas turned deep red. They survived manmade wildfires. They drank up the declining waters in the river. They endured.

I’m at the park looking over these hills in our new, bigger home’s subdivision. There’s a chain-link fence surrounding the playground, peppered with Jasmine. Her vines cling to the fence’s walls, overlooking the same enduring hills. Entangled in her leaves is a flyer. It flaps stubbornly in the wind.

JOIN US FOR THE HOA’S ANNUAL ICE CREAM SOCIAL BENEFITTING OUR NEIGHBORHOOD LITTLE LEAGUE!

SIGN UP FOR THE 50/50. GRAND PRIZE: GLOCK G17 9MM PISTOL

Ten days later, nineteen children and two teachers were murdered at an elementary school two hours away. But I had pretty countertops.

“Can we get ice cream?” My daughter looks at the flyer, her eyes wide with hope at its vanilla cone and rainbow sprinkles.

“Maybe next time,” I say. Knowing I’m breaking her heart.

I look to the Jasmine and remember. Before our kids. Before our fancy countertops and 8-burner stove, there was just us, the promise to care and nurture our lives, no matter how flimsy the structures around us may be.

We packed up our things and moved back to a smaller home, yard, and life the following Spring. Vowing that our children needed to be where guns are prohibited, and murder hadn’t happened at school.

Our new home’s small yard needed tending, but most of all, it needed privacy. We roll up our sleeves and prepare to build a small backyard oasis. Omar builds trellises and garden beds for the Star Jasmine, to block out the view of our nextdoor neighbor.

“This is the plant that we were married with,” I say, bringing up a picture of our wedding day.

He kisses my forehead and continues to pour soil into the garden beds.

The Star Jasmine and I become close. I water her deeply and weekly. I prune her leaves and give her plant food. I turn the mulch and try to listen to what she needs, even though I’ve never talked to plants. I imagine the day when she’s grown so lush and thick. Her small white flowers accepting our invitation to bloom. Her rich green leaves provide privacy with softness and grace. I decided, despite all my failed attempts at the mystical art of gardening, that this Jasmine would survive.

Summer stays for far too long, and my Jasmine starts to burn. Fall arrives only on the calendar. The days get drier, harsher. Kids play in the piles of brown, dead, scorched leaves instead of the wet, cool, auburn leaves of a Northern Fall. My Jasmine is in direct sunlight, and I can’t protect her from the overbearing heat and brightness of daylight. I attempt to cover her with umbrellas, but the heat overbears me, too. So I stay inside, watching her burn. I was not born a caretaker.

She makes it through the scorching summer and the hot Fall. Like every winter, the cold arrives with little warning. The mornings are near freezing temperatures as the afternoons soar into the 90s, sometimes even 100s. How a plant endures, I’ll never understand.

On the eve of our first freeze, my youngest daughter is sick. Her fever and barking cough take up most of my attention. My oldest demands what little attention I have left, and Omar is on a work trip. The meals still need to be made, and clothes still need to be washed, when the news tells me to prepare my plants. Protect them from the freeze. Hearty plants made for the Texas heat won’t survive our changing climate.

It’s here where my Jasmine loses hope. Her sunburned leaves turn to brown crisps. They slightly fall, each one a tear cried for their lack of priority. I open the shopping app on my phone. On the homepage: a vibrant privacy plant trellis, with leaves made of plastic and polyester. Bigger, better than the dying plant in front of me.

“If the stems are green on the inside, she’s still alive,” my friend encourages with all the optimism of a plant person. I’ve invited her over to diagnose my failure.

I think about the Jasmine, swirling around the wobbly arch of our wedding day. And the Jasmine on the playground, protesting the award of guns. And this Jasmine in front of me, pleading for care. Do I stay and nourish her resilience, or root her out of my life? Replace her with plastic and polyester so my neighbor can’t see what happens in our backyard.

One click and the plastic plant is in my app’s shopping cart. I envision a private yard with no effort. I scoff. Even bigger and better require effort, just not mine.

People move. We worry. We demand more. We buy guns and expensive countertops. We wonder if any of it is enough. People are a transactional checking account, waiting for the moment we can cash in on the next bigger, better thing. Plants stay still. They demand long-term investment. Their return comes only with endurance and nourishment.

I cut her dead vines off, and keep the green ones. Throwing them to the ground, it feels like a new haircut. A perfect pixie cut, ready to grow unruly and new at the next Austin Spring. I am reborn, a caretaker.

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Mindy Morgan Avitia is a narrative nonfiction writer whose work has been featured in Scary Mommy, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, and An Injustice! Magazine. She lives in Austin, TX, with her partner and two children.