A Resilient Heart-Vine

20260115

Written for Luna Asli Kolcu’s “Myths of Winter - Week 7” event.

Karen had never understood the appeal of gardening. Such a messy and unpredictable pastime. She was happy with her plastic plants and synthetic lawn. All of the prettiness, none of the faff.
So naturally she was surprised to see green shoots peeping from the snow in her back yard. Were midwinter weeds a thing?? She wrapped up and crunched over to investigate.
Looked like some kind of vine. A whole tangle of vines, actually, pushing out of the snow and unfurling little red heart-shaped leaves to drink in the pale winter sun.
Quite pretty. And utterly unfamiliar. Admittedly, the old lady who lived here before Karen bought the place had been mad about gardening. The yard had looked like a jungle. There could’ve been anything under that lot.
Karen retreated back to the warmth and downloaded a plant identification apps. But it just kept returning “no matches”. She downloaded another app… then another… tried taking more photos… tried using a torch to add more light… nothing worked.
Ugh, fine! She’d do this the old-fashioned way. Look for “vine red leaves grows in winter”.
An hour of increasingly baffled searching later, she was none the wiser. According to the internet, this vine didn’t exist. Which was absurd.
Unless it was some designer strain which wasn’t widely known? Or… had that old lady been breeding plants? Possibly not intentionally.
Well, whatever the cause of this mystery, Karen decided it was probably worth contacting some horticultural person and seeing if they were interested in it. Better for someone to take a weed away for free - or maybe even pay her! - rather than her having to get a gardener in. It’d been quite enough trouble clearing the jungle in the first place. She’d had to move to a hotel for a week to wait for the poisons to disperse.
So she found the email for the university’s botanical garden and sent them a quick message with the photos. See what they said.
In the meantime, well, it was a nice spot of colour against the snow and grey fence. Bright green and deep red… it could almost be a belated holiday decoration.
Her phone pinged. Oh, a response already? Perfect, let’s see what they-
Automatic out of office response? Saying they weren’t going to be back until the… that was two weeks from now! Honestly, what kind of person took a month off after the winter holidays? That sort of shoddy ethic was why service was going to pot these days. Ugh.
Well, whatever. If the vine died out there before they got to it, that was on them. Perhaps it would even teach them something.
Karen shook her head and finished making her latte and headed up to her home office. Unlike some people, she had deadlines to meet!
She soon managed to bury herself in the comforting logic and structure of accounting spreadsheets, and the rest of the day passed in a contentedly productive blur. By the time she finished work darkness had fallen, rendering the vine invisible, and she didn’t even think about the garden.
It was the next morning, when she stopped for her usual elevenses coffee break, that she saw the vines again. They’d grown. A lot. Was that normal? They were now a tangle of crimson spaghetti larger than her hall rug.
Karen stomped out to take more photos, and sent another email to the botanical people - not that it’d do any good, with the slackers still blissfully off work.
Honestly, you’d think they’d at least check their messages occasionally while on vacation!
The leaves were now fully unfurled, their size and waxiness putting her in mind of the ivy which had covered the house. Nasty stuff. It’d been a huge pain to remove.
Also like ivy, there seemed to be clusters of berries forming in groups of five along the stems. Was it liable to spread? Maybe she’d just put some berries in a jar and get someone to take care of the plant itself, before this got out of hand and her nice tidy yard started regressing.
Karen shuddered and hurried back inside.
It was a shame. The old woman probably would’ve been well chuffed to find a new and exciting plant in her garden. Everyone in the neighbourhood said she’d loved the place. It’d been her pride and joy. Allegedly she’d even had her ashes scattered there, which (if true, and not a ghoulish tale to try and put Karen off clearing the yard) was surely the sort of thing a real estate agent should be required to mention!
Well, bad luck to the vine - this was now her garden, and she liked her garden tidy. So it simply had to go.
She supposed she could ask if anyone local wanted it, but… with how fast it was growing, she’d rather any remains be far from her property, thank you!
Besides… she’d been rather a pariah since getting the garden sorted. Some people were far too opinionated about what others did with their property. She’d rather not give them all a reminder of her ‘transgression’ and set back the healing.
No. She’d wait for the berries to look ripe, take some samples, and get someone in to dispose of it.
Karen went to bed that night satisfied with her plan. Oblivious to how the vines had uncoiled and were climbing, imperceptibly slow yet unnaturally fast, up the house.
The drafty old windows had been filled in with insulating foam. A temporary measure which was far easier to push through than mortar.
Silently, mercilessly, the vine squirmed until it was touching Karen’s pillow, then unfurled delicate white, finger-like flowers which breathed sweet poison into the room. It smelt eerily like herbicide.
Karen’s last dream was of the garden - the old garden - with an elderly lady sitting in its midst, peacefully drinking from a thermos. Karen tried to call out to her, but couldn’t. She couldn’t move at all, in fact. Like she was rooted in place…

Prompt was “Everyone knows nothing grows in winter. But something is growing in your garden. Green shoots pushing through snow. Fruit forming in frozen air. Whatever it is, it’s hungry too. And it’s growing toward the house.”