CYCLE OF AFFIRMATION

It was a quiet day here, today---no fireworks, no company, no cookouts. We started the day with our coffee outside, and then a three-of-us in planting mode---getting the great pot-corral between the outbuildings all cleaned up, with most plastic ones sent to recycle, and all the terra-cottas either put to use or stacked neatly. The little worn picket fence “concealing” them was moved back into the cleared space, with a neat iron lawn-chair, the long-ago yellow paint on its slender frame a mere whisper of itself, with a graceful white pot of pink impatiens dropped into the space where the seat would be.

Caro spent her morning setting sets-of-three pots of red, white, and “blue” impatiens into other pots set around the benches, the grapevine trellis, and atop the aging white pedestal by the bistro set. The blue is more a purple hue, but there seems to be no real “navy” in the flower world. And pastel blue gives the effect of a Cake-Wrecks flag cake, made by an inexperienced or unheeding baker and left to languish on the mark-down table the Fifth of July.


So we got our hands into the dirt, planting and grubbing, getting all the maple spinners out from between the heavy-leafed hostas, re-arranging the stones in the flowerbeds, pulling up hundreds of hopeful little maples, sweeping out sticks and debris, and filling a lawn-sack for this week’s Big Garbage Day.


We got out the round patio table and a couple of old wicker pieces too long in the damp dark back of the potting shed. The pale green piece went onto the porch, and the old rattan guy, wide of arm and sturdy of ravelly back, went out beside the back fence to garnish the hosta bed.


We found wrought-iron sconces and window-boxes and several other things several years in the losing, and HAVE TO STOP SOMEWHERE.


Caro brought a nifty cantaloupe-sized gazing ball made into a hanging lantern, its solar bulb glowing in the twilight, and one of the regular variety, in swirls of iridescent cobalt and copper. The old fishing float on the tree is still hanging on, the graying rope and the haze of the glass a testament to several year-round tours of sentinel duty on the Big Tree.

And last Sunday’s seed scatter has taken root and risen in beegrillions on the big round sandy plot of the back garden---I know a lot of them will have to be ruthlessly thinned, and there are enough wee maples in there amongst the flowers to make a good sized forest in a few years.


The tallest sunflowers---the nine-foot variety---are just tiny babies now, standing a couple of inches tall; they have a neat dicot atop like a propeller beanie, and just days ago, I walked out to see their first glimpse of sunlight. They were standing there just out of the ground, their tiny necks like white threads topped with the split seed---they had the appearance of peeking out from Hobbit-helms like Merry and Pippin, with the halves down over their ears on either side.

We were outside when it started to rain, big pelting drops shaking the leaves and drenching our clothes. We just stood for a moment, all of us out there in the beginning of the downpour, soaking in the moment as the soil began to soak up the moisture. We came in for a long time, cooked and ate our supper together, cleared the table.

Then we slipped on our mud-trusty clogs and went out again, just to see how everything looked, and it was lovely---dripping and very green, with the plants standing taller, leaves fuller and more rounded, and the darkening of the big garden bed showing up the greens like jewels on velvet.


It's not yet a sea of green, but a haze of it is forming from all the tee-ninecy leaves seeking the light. It’s a satisfying thing, making a garden. A holy thing and a good, and it was a day well spent, this day of remembering those gone too soon. The cycle of seed and season confirms our place in this chain, and commemorates theirs.