New Flowers

I put some mums and daisies and daffodils in our containers out front today. Sunshine yellow and paper white and a kind of fuschia purple that you might find in a big box of crayons. After the heavy rain overnight and this morning, the soil was moist and clumpy and perfect for planting. It's a delight to see those colors after the drab winter.

When I dream of the few years I'm likely to allow myself for full retirement, I dream of gardens. A space filled with bright annuals and persistent wildflowers and bushes and perennials that require seasonal care and attention. A place to sweat and get the good soil of the earth under my nails.

You see I spent a good part of my young adult years caring for other people's gardens. It was good work while I was a student. It left me time to think and to dream. It gave me wholesome work to do while I was still unsure of how I would make my way in the world. It's good to begin in a garden.

And in the event the pleasant garden of my retirement does not materialize someday (though I very much hope it does), I spend a little time - a day each season at most - uprooting and pruning and making my little temporary garden fresh. Yellow, white, fuschia and the black moist, musty soil of early spring; they're all in my thoughts today and will be in my dreams tonight.

I'm looking out at those flowers now. I know the earth and all its changes are stirring and that new things will come. I wonder what this season will bring. I'm planting the flowers and hoping. I'm thinking and dreaming of what will come.

Good night.