For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come, and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air.
Solomon 2:11-12
When Ex-man first moved out, my garden was barren; we were at the tail end of a long, cold winter. Two weeks after his departure, the spindly Daphne bush in the front garden went into delicate, fragrant bloom heralding the departure of winter and the approach of spring.
Shortly afterward, the snowdrops started poking out of the soil followed by the crocuses and a few tulips. These were all bulbs that I didn’t plant but were enjoying as auspices of life’s regenerative power, especially post apocalypse of a breakup.
After the wisteria episode (Marble 276), I’ve started taking notice of the somewhat bleak garden at the rental home where I live. The garden needs tending and even the mail carrier left a warning note saying that she was finding it difficult to pass along the sidewalk to the house. My school year is over and it’s time to don some gardening gloves and get to work.
I can’t plant everything I’d like in the garden immediately - the spring bulbs I’ll have to wait until fall to plant (and all have to collect the other plants over time) but I make a list of plants, flowers, and berries that I’d like to eventually have in the garden. These include: raspberries, blueberries, tulips, narcissus, anemones, alliums, poppies, irises, lilies, lilacs, lilies of the valley, sweet peas, hydrangea, and of course wisteria (the house already has fragrant jasmine and hollyhock vines - yippee!)
I think I’ve always loved flowers. One of my earliest memories is of me and my neighborhood friends deciding to open a “florist”. Of course we needed inventory so we went around to all the neighbor’s yards and nabbed their flowers. We went back to my garage and put the flowers in buckets of water and had an amazingly colorful display. As the afternoon progressed, and the impending arrival of my father’s car in the garage became a threat, we realized that we needed to hide our pilfered blooms. We took them and stealthily hid them in the ivy vine between my house and the neighbor’s. When the neighbor found the floral contraband, the trail easily traced back to me and I had to go around the neighborhood and apologize for stealing the flowers.
I imagine my finished garden in bloom and I see myself snipping flowers from my garden to give to friends, and who knows, perhaps a new lover after my marbles are gone. If I’ve moved from this house before I get to enjoy the blossoms, I’ll know that I’ve added something lovely to a home where I’ve lived. It’s good to leave a place better than the way it’s found. The little girl that I was somehow reminds me to be less possessive about my flowers. She reminds me to let go, let go of the wisteria. Let go.
What did you love as a child? Do you love them still? If so, is there a way to make space for more of that joy in your life?
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