The Hosta Situation

Newsletter 2026-07-05

This was supposed to be a newsletter about a family reunion. Instead, I’m here to report a crime. The weapon? A shovel. The motive? Envy. Greed. Possibly blood lust. The victim? I’ll get to that. Before I reveal the exciting middle of this tale, I have to tell you how it started. Chronological storytelling is a burden for us all.

I wasn’t even supposed to be there. For the first time in decades, I couldn’t make it to my family’s annual Fourth of July gathering at my aunt’s house near Minneapolis. My mom and her eight siblings assemble there every year, along with a smattering of cousins, second cousins, and cousins once removed. Even with less than total attendance, we still pack her place with enough people to fill a charter bus. We spend a day lounging in her pool, let the kids burn themselves with sparklers, and then sprint for the house at precisely 8 p.m. when mosquitos the size of horses show up. Whoa unto you if you don’t get that sliding glass door all the way closed. Unlike vampires, mega mosquitos don’t need an invitation to come inside.

My wife and I have made the trip there every summer like clockwork. We’re fixtures, with a designated bedroom each time. We have an open invitation, and our attendance is expected. I don’t take that for granted. The older I get, the fewer places I’m wanted. It’s important for me to visit people before every bridge is burned and I’m forced to stay home. That’s why I was disappointed when I had to turn down the Fourth of July trip this year. My middle two kids, Mae and Lucy, would be gone all week at BSA camp leading up to that weekend. They would arrive back in our suburb in the middle of the day Saturday when we were supposed to be ten hours away in Minneapolis. We couldn’t have two middle schoolers return to an empty house when Lola and I were in a different state. I told my aunts and uncles I couldn’t come this year. They gave away my reserved bedroom to a different relative. I was devastated. It was the end of an era. Then my oldest daughter found a way.

Betsy asked if she could go to Minneapolis with her grandparents and without me. She just needed to make it to Illinois, and they could take her the rest of the way. In theory, she could drive to Illinois herself. I was reluctant to let her navigate the Interstate after having her driver’s license for all of three days. I said I could take her to Illinois. Then I realized I could just keep going and also ride with my parents to Minneapolis while Lola stayed home to receive our returning scouts. Lola graciously agreed. In a dramatic turnaround, I was back in for the Minneapolis trip. The first step of any good family reunion is abandoning your own family.

Betsy and I set off early Friday morning. An hour later, we arrived at my parents’ house, where I switched into passenger mode. I could browse my phone and zone out at will while somebody else handled all the stress of driving. Sitting in the second row of my parents’ compact SUV, I felt like I was flying first class. The only way it could have been better would have been if they still owned their minivan. While riding in the third row is only marginally more comfortable than being put in a burlap sack and pushed down a flight of stairs, sitting in the middle row is a tier better than first class. What would that level even be called? Zero class? Given my usual behavior, that sounds about right. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. The seats were perfectly engineered, but my body is not. I couldn’t figure out a way to position my pillow that would let me sleep without leaving me paralyzed. Apparently most people’s necks turn in more than one direction. I should look into that, but only if it’s right in front of me. Unable to get comfortable, I stayed awake for most of the trip. Consciousness is a curse.

We took a longer route through Iowa to avoid the traffic snarls that happen every year in the Wisconsin Dells. That leg took us about nine hours, plus the twenty minutes it took my dad to program bathroom stops into his GPS. Being old means having a favorite chain of truck stops. We arrived at my aunt’s house shortly before dinner. I was told that my usual bedroom had been given away to better relatives who hadn’t canceled and then canceled on canceling. Besides, I only had a bed there for all the prior years because my aunts liked Lola. Without her, I was relegated to a couch in the basement. I’m lucky they let me sleep in the house at all. There was plenty of space in the yard.

The forecast called for rain both days, but Friday stayed completely dry. Betsy fixed that by hopping in the pool. Pizza arrived not long after we did, which is the welcome I want everywhere I go. We settled in around the outdoor tables for the fellowship only freshly delivered carbs can provide. The words between us flowed freely. That’s when I first heard about the crime.

Like most guys, my cousin’s husband, Jim, spends a lot of time gazing lovingly at his hostas. They weren’t just any herbaceous perennials (I may or may not have used Wikipedia for that description). These were premiere broadleaf foliage, purchased for eighty-three dollars five years before. Jim spent the next half of a decade painstakingly cultivating them. They thrived. They grew to be huge and lush, the greenest hostas in all the land. Full disclosure: I don’t really know how good the hostas are everywhere else. For the purposes of this story, I choose to believe that these hostas were literally the best ones in the country, if not the world. If you’ve seen hostas that you think were better, I regret to inform you that you are wrong. His neighborhood noticed his landscaping triumph. As Jim gazed upon his hostas, he would often see his neighbors stop to admire them. Their hearts were filled with hosta lust. The situation was volatile.

Photo by Eugene Golovesov on Unsplash

Then, the inevitable happened. Jim woke up to look at his hostas, just like he did every morning. But instead of an unbroken line of botanical glory, there was a gap. He rushed over to the spot where a hosta should have been. It was gone. In its place, there was only a precisely dug hole. (Yes, he still has a picture of the hole on his phone and will gladly show it upon request.) The plant had been removed cleanly by the roots, bulb and all. Jim fell to his knees and let out a cry of rage. That absolutely didn’t happen, but I’m the one telling this story and I’ll lie if I want to. It was unlikely that the hosta had left of its own free will. Someone had taken it. This was a good old-fashioned hosta-napping. It was time to call in the police, if not the military. If only Jim had the phone number for Seal Team Six.

Everyone was a suspect. Jim surveyed the neighborhood. No one had a giant, five-year-old hosta in their front yard that had appeared overnight. If a neighbor did have it, they must have hidden it in their backyard behind a privacy fence. But if that were the case, why bother stealing it at all? This wasn’t a hosta for your own private enjoyment. This was a hosta to flex on your neighbors. It needed to be on full display at all times. No wonder some nefarious individual thought it had to go.

My theory was that the thief was a landscaper who saw the hosta while doing work for someone else in the neighborhood. Only they would both appreciate the impressiveness of the hosta and have a place to unload it. Most ordinary people don’t have access to the hosta black market. Perhaps they had a rich customer who wanted fully grown plants and wouldn’t ask too many questions. Jim didn’t recall any particular landscapers who had been in the area, but he couldn’t rule it out. The logical next move was to abandon the family reunion to knock on doors and search Jim’s neighborhood for clues. We had enough people at my aunt’s house to form a posse and set out for vigilante justice. Instead, we stayed put to hang out for a second day by the pool. That was okay, too.

There were other stories told over the weekend, but none with the high stakes of the hosta situation. My aunts and uncles mainly talked about retirement. Most of them have either already quit working or could quit at any time. They pondered how they would spend their lives of leisure. My oldest cousins are on the cusp of becoming empty nesters. They talked about what they would do with their extra free time and disposable income. I was only a little jealous. I’ll have kids in my house for at least another decade, if not longer. As for retirement, if I have to pay for college and weddings, I can afford to stop working about two years after I die. I’m looking forward to it.

While it will be a long time before my children move out, my weekend was almost kid-free. Betsy is practically an adult. Without a younger sibling to squabble with in the back seat of my parents’ SUV, she had the most peaceful ride of her life. In Minneapolis, she had her own group to hang out with. My youngest aunt is only seven years older than me. She has two daughters who are around Betsy’s age. They’re my cousins and Betsy’s cousins-once-removed. I think I’ve finally figured out how to use that term correctly. If I haven’t, don’t tell me. The only feedback I want this week is leads on the missing hosta. Betsy was eager to spend time with my cousins who were her age, which she doesn’t get to experience at home since all of her own cousins are much younger. After we completed the ten hour trip, I asked her if she had actually texted them to make sure they were coming. She had not. Luckily, they showed up on the second afternoon. They ran around like I used to with my throngs of cousins in my grandma’s basement a hundred years ago. My uncle (which sounds ridiculous because he’s barely older than me) said he’ll bring his kids a day early next year if we text them ahead of time. Then Betsy and her not-cousins can truly recreate the cousin experience. That’s what family reunions are all about.

This was my first time going back to Minnesota without my full crew. I might do it again. It’s not that I don’t love my own children. I just don’t want to subject them to extra road trips against their will. We’ll always take them to the Fourth of July reunion if BSA summer camp allows. They have a ton of fun swimming for a day and a half. But we’ve shied away from going more than once a year. It’s hard to take kids that far with all the accompanying gear, especially in winter when the roads are bad and susceptible to yeti attack. After going this weekend, however, I realized I could probably slip away with just Betsy to visit for other extended family functions throughout the year. My relatives and I have all settled into a routine where we each show up for certain holidays. Mine is the Fourth of July, which is why most people pick literally any other holiday. If I showed up in December, I’d run into cousins I haven’t talked to in a decade. That would be the last time for another decade since they’d have to flee to other holidays. Let’s see if I can ruin Christmas.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James