There’s an old, fire-damaged house down the street from me with an overgrown garden that, in happier days, must have been a pretty little garden. Every spring amidst the overgrown brambles and roses, I’ve admired a crop of unusual oxalis plants with pink flowers rather than the typical white.

Well, today I saw that the house has been torn down to make way for a new apartment building; it’s now a construction site surrounded by chain-link fence, slated for bulldozing. So I grabbed my trowel and a couple of bags, snuck through a gap in the fence, and rescued the plants.

They’re now tucked into my own garden bed, and I’m hoping they’ll recover enough before the spring growing season to survive and bloom. Fingers crossed!