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One day Yuna brings a plant into Shane and Ilya’s house. It’s just a little pothos. “To bring a little green life into your home,” Yuna says. Shane has never been the type to care for plants. So he tells Ilya to look after the plant.
Ilya takes this task very seriously. He googles how to care for the little pothos, how often it needs water and how much. Where to place it. Full sun to partial shade, he learns. And the little plant thrives. It creates one new leaf after the other. Ilya is delighted every time and shows Shane his accomplishment. Shane’s proud smile encourages him even more. Yuna asks regularly about the plant and Ilya can proudly tell how well the plant is doing.
One evening he watches a YouTube video about plant cuttings. Ilya is amazed that you can create more than one plant out of the mother plant. So amazed, that he dives into a rabbit hole about plants and gardening. The next day he tells Shane he wants to go to the plant store. They come back with ten new houseplants and a starter set for garden vegetables. He creates a whole care list for all the plants. With Shane’s help, obviously. It contains everything you need to know to take care of the plants while Ilya is away. Mostly Yuna takes care of the plants when they are on the road. Sometimes Harris but only after an evening of thorough instructions.
In the spring he starts to plant the seeds for his garden vegetables. Every day he hopes for little green sprouts.
When the time finally comes he can’t contain himself. Everyone he knows gets a picture of the little sprouts and daily updates. Even Hayden.
The first time he can harvest some arugula he invites his team to cook for them and so everyone can taste the result of his labor. This is becoming a regular event. Every time he harvests something new someone is invited to taste it. Sometimes the team, sometimes Yuna and David, Rose and Svetlana or the Pikes.
When Shane and Ilya are at the plant store again Ilya finds a flower that reminds him of his mother. Coneflower. He remembers that she told him once that she loved them because they bloom almost all summer. Ilya doesn’t buy the flowers because he is scared that he can’t care for them and they will eventually die.
In the evening he tells Shane about the flowers and why he didn’t bought them. Shane listens and holds him while he cries.
The next time Ilya is out of the house he comes back to an array of coneflowers in the sunny part of the backyard.
“You take such good care of all the other plants so you will perfectly care for these. Irina would be proud of you. And I’m also very proud of you. And these are a beautiful addition to our backyard.”
Ilya can only fall into his husband’s arms and cry. After that the spot in the backyard with the coneflowers is the space Ilya goes to when he wants to talk to his mother or when he just wants to think about her or had a bad day. And he tells his mother that he is so happy to have Yuna. Because she is the reason he can now care for plants that remind him of Irina.