In a few more minutes it will be my birthday--August 14. I am so grateful to be another year older. Might sound weird, since I will turn 49 in ten minutes, and as we push the 50 threshold we tend to go into deep denial. But stay with me, and I'll tell you why.

Last August, Caitlin and I went to London and Paris to celebrate her graduation from high school. On August 1, my new granddaughter, Genevieve was born, and on the 2nd,we took off for parts unknown. It was a glorious 12 day trip, thanks to the kindness of my Dear Hubby, David. This was on top of the flood disaster last reported on this blog.

So we have this amazing trip, come home, and it's time for those wonderful quarterly tests that those of us who live in Cancer World have as part of our lives. This time the news wasn't good. The ovarian cancer was back metastized to the bowels, appendix, peritoneal lining. thanks to the kindness of my wonderful friends and neighbors, we moved back into our remodeled home just before Halloween. On November 13 I went in for more surgery. It was a biggie. Twelve days of hospitalization and dragging around the IV trying to begin recuperation. I finally came home from the hospital on Thanksgiving Day. Here are my brothers and sisters and spouses in my front yard on that day. If I look a little drugged, it's because I WAS!--but we had a lot to be thankful for.

I kept on recuperating through the holidays, then starting in January went through six courses of IP chemotherapy every three weeks. It was cistplatin and taxol delivered through an IP port in my abdomen, followed the next week by taxol only through a port in my chest. My worst day on my first go round with chemo in 2005 was 10 times better than my best day on this. For the next six months life consisted of puking, trying to drink enough water, going to the hospital for blood transfusions. After the fourth IP infusion, my kidneys shut down and I had to be hospitalized for that. I had to finish the chemo through the chest port only. So it's been two and half months since my last chemo. My hair is starting to come back. I can eat again...although it was a lousy diet, I didn't mind losing 45 pounds because of the chemo. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, though.

This is how I got to know my new granddaughter, Evie. I was too sick and weak to hold her most of the time, so we'd put her by me on the bed. This shot was taken in February, after two chemo rounds.

In April, my family and friends supported me in raising money to donate to Huntsman Cancer Hospital through a program called Hometown Heros. We raised $4000 as a team of eight. We walked a 5K on a cold Saturday morning...well OK, my team walked. I was pushed in a wheelchair. Not a bad ride, and I didn't throw up once on the route. It was exhilarating to be cheered across the finish line by those lining the route.

By May my hair was gone, but I had eyebrows left. Being too sick to work in my own garden, friends would rejuvenate my spirit by taking me on outings to public gardens. This was taken at Thanksgiving Point when my good friend Sandra took me for a tulip outing.

So there you have it--why I am happy to be 49. It means I'm still here...and I'm grateful to be getting my hair back and slowly getting back to normal. My friends and family have stood by my side through it all--from Dave who was with me every minute of every hospital stay, my sisters who traveled to be by my bedside and clean up after my puke, not to mention cleaning my house, my kids who were just always there, my mom and her husband, Jerry who worked in my yard doing spring clean-up, brought me gifts large and small, and friends and neighbors who showed up with food, flowers, books, gifts of time and labor. One dear friend, Paula, has come every weekday morning all summer long and pulled weeds and dead-headed flowers--it's due to her diligence that my garden looks as good s it does this year. I LOVE YOU ALL! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Happy birthday to me.

You can see I wasn't true to my word regarding posting pictures on Saturdays...but a few weeks later, here is a shot of the red and white petunia tubs on the front porch and over the arbor.

It's a good thing they bring me so much joy to look at, because we've endured a disaster recently. DH and I decided the time was overdue to replace the aging shingles on our home. We couldn't afford to have a roofer do it, and besides, DH is loath to pay for what he can do himself. He spent two grueling weeks stripping the roof to the bare wood. Now remember, we live in a desert here in Utah. We waited until the weather had turned consistently warm, but hopefully not blisteringly hot, so DH could survive the days working on the roof. The materials to dry it in (tarpaper, ice shield) and the shingles were due to arrive Friday morning. Thursday night it started to rain.

It wasn't any little afternoon thundershower like we so often get. This was freak monsoon rain sucked up from Mexico. We discovered that it rains inside the house when there are no shingles on the roof. Here are a couple of shots of what our house looks like now--after the disaster clean-up people came and dried it out. This is the kitchen and family rooms:

Every room looks something like this. DH calls it the Swiss Cheese Effect. I have a sign that used to sit on the sideboard saying "My house may be a mess, but you should see my garden." It's more true than ever now. I'll try to keep up with the garden shots of my baskets as we deal with putting the inside back together. You'll have to forgive me if I neglect my blogging.

Disappearing Blogger

It's not hard to fathom why I haven't written for nearly a month. It's May--following close up the heels of April and finally the weather allowed the planting and rearranging to begin. In went the peas and strawberries. Ten hanging baskets of petunias, lobelia and vebena were potted up to hang along the back fence. Eight more metal tubs filled with red and white petunias were hung under eaves of the front porch. I still have ten baskets to put on the archways of the two front gates that will eventually form an arch of flowers over each gate.

Petunias. I've long scoffed at their cliche and commonness. But they grow so faithfully, attracting hummingbirds and sphinx moths. I've given up the exotic for the tried and true--at least in my hanging baskets. I use a specially designed hanging basket with octagonal openings all along the sides, called Bloom Masters. I've found that in a few weeks time, the 2" seedlings I plant form a ball of flowers, completely hiding the container. Halfway through the summer they trail lush ropes of flowers 3 feet long or more. I'm going to post a picture each week so you can track the progress with me. Look for it on Saturdays.

At last! A day of sunshine on a weekend! Small blessings. On top of that, DH promised me he would spend the day with me in the garden, pruning, chipping and shredding and moving compost around...all of those heavy work jobs that are so much harder for me since the cancer.

We were in the garden by 7:30 AM and I tried to be sensitive to the fact that for him it was just hard labor, not a labor of love or passion. He quit the first time at about 1:00 PM, saying that the compost all over his arms and hair was making him itch. It's a fall-out of running the chipper-shredder. So he went in to shower. A while later, he joined me again--I know it was his secret hope that if he quit, I'd quit too, but he didn't say anything, to his credit. And I didn't quit. I am sure he doesn't think that's to my credit.

But it was still a warm spring day, many hours of daylight left and more to prune. I can't stop while there's light in the sky and breath in my body. He came back out when I got to some large rose branches I couldn't prune out. Then without my asking, he kindly chipped the next huge pile I had assembled while he was in the house. After that pile he hit the shower again. I kept pruning. He joined me one more time at about 4 PM when I got to the last climbing rose and had to prune out a 7 year old cane.

Poor guy--he's not used to the War of the Roses, and was pricked, scratched, poked, and stabbed. He lamented a lot about his scrapes. I commiserated with him and pointed out that's why I wear long sleeves and elbow length pruning gloves. I must remind myself that he's a total novice at working with the roses, so it's quite a shock to him, I'm sure. (I might also add that I've been pruning and tying up our 26 rose bushes scattered throughout the gardens for more than seven years by myself. )

I really do appreciate his help, although by 5:00 PM he told me "that's it, I'm done." I kept going until 7:30 PM. Finally, the mosquitoes drove me inside. I ask myself "why does the garden energize me so?" It seems to kill others off. I don't get it. But at least now, when he heads off to the golf course on a Saturday and says "have fun" to me as I head into the garden, I can gently remind him of how much work my kind of fun is. It's not that I mind it, it's just I want to be validated...and helped now and again.

It drizzled sleet all weekend. Not strong enough to be snow, but too thick for rain, it's been a continual gray curtain for two days. If you could stay curled by the fire with a good book, it wouldn't seem so onerous, perhaps. But I had to accomplish some rearranging of rooms and organization of my office. DH rose admirably to the occasion, though I know he hates these sudden projects being sprung upon him. I started taking all the books off the shelves in my office. He asked, "What are you doing?" I told him I was planning on moving the bookshelves from my office to the front bedroom, recently vacated by my married daughter and her little family. I'm turning it into a library-guestroom-play-TigerWoods-golf-on-the-X-box room. Right now my office, the guest room and the front room are in disarray as I move things from one to the other. DH installed another desktop (a counter top piece) in my office to complete a U-shape around the room. It wasn't easy. We couldn't get a piece from the factory that had 45-degree angles on both ends, so he cut it himself. Took some sanding and finessing to get it right...not perfect joins, but very close. I can live with that. At least I have a lot of space on which to spread my scrapbook projects out...and I can leave them in partially finished states without disrupting the flow of the rest of the household. I've got the room about 70% sorted and organized and I've been working on it for four hours. But when it's done, I'll be able to share my scrapbooking / office space with Chrissy. As it is, only one of us can work in here at a time.

I even think I'll have room in the corner for the overstuffed chair I fantasize about, with a reading light and a window to gaze out. That will be a good day.

It snowed 13 inches Tuesday morning. Gack. I hurt my shoulder over the weekend and so can do very little. Shoveling the wet mess was left to DH, who did it with grace and no grumbling. Of course this means that the crocus, daffodils and other brave flowers just beginning to show their colors are now mashed to the ground under the load of snow. It's always inspiring to see how quickly they regain their composure after being dumped on and flattened into the mud. Wish I could learn to do the same. It is supposed to snow over the weekend again.

Spring is teasing us in Utah. One day it will be 60 degrees and the next it snows. The sunny days are all during the work week and the storms seem to fall on the weekends. It's painful for a gardener who also works full time. In fact, not able to stand it a moment longer, I spent a few hours this afternoon puttering in my garden. It took until late Sunday afternoon for the temperatures to climb back to 50 degrees.

I was suduced, as I so often am. I noticed ten or so bright yellow crocuses near the driveway, fighting their way through a mat of dead alyssum. I stooped to clear the alyssum away, got tangled in a pansy and noticed a sprig of lamb's ear that sowed itself in an entirely inappropriate place. So I cut back the pansy, pulled out the lambs ear along with dead the alyssum and stooped closer trying to remember what the small-leafed perennial was I planted beneath the America rose. A pile of dead foliage was forming on the driveway, so of course I had to go find my yard cart--back behind the compost pile. I piled the leaves and tangles of dead perennials in the cart. But wait--a little more raking back of dead leaves and the yellow-gold striped blades of "Harkonen" grass can catch the light.

Then suddenly, two hours had gone by and I had pruned back two of my eight climbing roses and cleaned up two of the entry way beds by my front gate. My back hurts a little and when I think of the rest of the garden that needs attention I feel overwhelmed--yet somehow strangely peaceful with the smell of dirt in my nostrils. Spring is here in all her fickleness.

The weatherman says four storms in the next fourteen days, and if it holds true to the recent pattern, they'll fall on the weekends. So I'll keep on, squeezing some puttering time in the cracks of sunshine.

Hair.

Ever since my hair grew back from the chemo baldness, it's soft and dark, a newness not yet turned coarse by sun and wind and life. I often run my fingers through it and ponder how the barren landscape of my scalp has so quickly been cloaked by hair again. Hair must be nothing but a common weed to grow so unabashedly. Like gardeners battling bindweed, we pluck it from our eyebrows, from the earlobes of our 52 year old spouses, from our upper lips and chins. There is something obscenely old about a hair sprouting from body parts that never saw hair before. But I am thankful for it. There is something even more obscene about looking at yourself in a mirror and not finding one hair on your naked body. You don't know how much you love your hair until it's not there. The picture of Jacob and I was taken in August just a couple of weeks after my last chemo treatment.

The bright side. My daughter put water based tattoos of roses on my scalp. I never had to shave my armpits or legs or worry about errant hairs while in a swimsuit. I pretended to be a Trill. I wore scarves and hats and got ready to go anywhere in under 10 minutes. People stopped me in Park City when it was only a quarter inch long all over and complemented my fashion sense and radical hairdo. I really can't decide if life is better with it or without. Hair.

This second picture was taken towards the end of October 2005. Only about 8 weeks after the bald me. And I even have eyebrows and eyelashes again. The human body is amazingly resilient. And I did too look like Uncle Fester.

Today is February 8, 2006. A Wednesday. I am recovered from last November's hernia repair surgery. I can do all my normal ab exercises, yoga...everything. Yet I have a nagging worry in the back of my mind. I hate not knowing whether it's founded in reality or I'm just being a hypochondriac. My body doesn't feel like the me I know. I've gained 40 pounds since the onset of cancer a year ago. Everyone else I know seems to lose weight with cancer...me I gained. I continued my workouts the entire time I was going through chemo, my eating habits haven't changed. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I have to finally get much more strict with myself.

Yet I have these episodes of heartburn, of urping surprise mini-vomit into the back of my throat. At times I feel bloated and gassy. Is this because of my added weight, or is the cancer returning? My doctor tells me these are things to report. But in January I had two different doctor visits, bloodwork, an internal pelvic exam, and they tell me all is well. My CA-125 levels are at 20 and have been stable since last August. If I try to speak of this to anyone (family, friends) they tell me I need to be positive and not dwell on the statistics of ovarian cancer recurrence rates. I think it bothers them to talk about it.

Two nights ago I told DH that I thought it was important that we redo our roof (has a leak), take care of big projects and pay off all debt as fast as possible--while I am still employed and we have two incomes. He did not like the conversation I could tell, but he listened. Then he asked me if I was worried I was dying. I said "not worried, really, but the reality of the prospects have to be faced. There's more than a 60% chance I won't be here in five years." This is not a thing anyone likes to talk about. Mom is going about normal life, goes to work, works in the garden, teaches exercise class, does everything she always does...so all is well. I hope so, but still, I wonder at times.

Spring is fast approaching. It's been a very mild winter. DH golfed on December 23rd. That is really weird for Utah. There is no snow covering the chaos of decaying plant matter from last season. I keep telling myself it's good for my perennials, that it's good for reseeding, that it's good for the birds. It certainly isn't tidy looking though, and all my neighbors have these sterile, clean looking winter yards with frost defining every trimmed grass blade. Mine is a riot of stem, curled brown leaf and seed. I find beauty in that too. The picture is of star zinna seed heads cozying up to a red sandstone in my front garden. The saying on the stone "Don't tell your God how big your storms are, tell your storms how big your God is."

Waning

Life Snip

It is now November 19, 2005. Another season wanes. In this Utah desert “blossoming like a rose” things are still growing, but slowly. Since October I have done nothing, absolutely nothing in my garden. I feel sad about this as I wander the pathways, seeing overgrown plants flop this way and that, unkempt, like a bunch of drunken sailors. There is a reason for this lack of care in my garden. I’ve been struggling with the discovery of another lump in my lower abdomen. Since a diagnosis of ovarian cancer last February, a lump is a major call for alarm.

So September and October were spent squeezing doctor visits around work schedules, as I was gearing up for a major event the first week of November which necessitated 12 plus hour work days for two weeks. “Just a hernia,” the doctor said. No reason for fear—often happens after a major surgery like I endured last January. But tests, just to be sure. Then blood in the stools one weekend and a colonoscopy and more surgery—but the news is good. It was just a hernia. They opened me and poked around for a visual confirmation of what the tests showed—no cancer. Now I’ve been taped up from the inside out, sealed with staples on the final layer of flesh and laid out in my bed to heal. I roll slowly to my side, like a floundering whale. The incision bites and stings.

I wander my garden paths unable to make order from the chaos, unable to bend, squat, reach, stretch. The earth is forgiving though. She swallows the seeds spilled from the dying season. Next spring she will unfurl the miracle of life again. It is winter and I will wait. I will heal.

A little over halfway through August. Things seem to be dying right and left in my garden. This is partly because I went out of town for a week and left my dear hubby in charge of watering the few pots that aren't on the drip system. He neglected four of them. I came back to discover brown ratty twigs with clinging vegetation where once bloomed flowers. Oh well. This is life in a garden. No water, no life. To the right is a memorial shot of the plants in their prime. So long star zinnas, petunias and alyssum. Thanks for the memories. Sorry you had to go through slow dehydration. Not a way I'd like to die. But lest anyone think ill of DH, please know that he has many stellar qualities. He does most of the cooking around here and builds amazing structures for the garden. At right is a shot of him standing in the pond he dug by hand in 2001. It's a wonderful oasis now. I will focus on that and forgive the four dead pots.

This dwarf Korean lilac gives me the fragrance I love in a yard where space is at a premium. Where a normal lilac gets 8 feet or taller, this one maxes out at 4 feet high and wide. It blooms at the side of my pond in my north facing front yard.

What is it about the scent of lilacs in May? It reminds me of grandma, the springs of my teen years, first love. Like Sister Mary Leo sings in Nunsense, "Every time I smell lilacs /I remember my first romance. I was putting on a ballet in my backyard /When I fell in love with the dance." Maybe it's because lilac blooms coincide with the time of spring when things warm up enough to spend comfortable time outside after a winter cooped up indoors. Lilacs always smell alive to me. Alive is something a cancer survivor notices.

Why am I musing about lilacs and spring in the heat of July? Because it's been so hot here all month. After several weeks of 95 plus degree temperatures, my garden is gasping. Even regular waterings can't seem to cool the plants. Their transpiration process has kicked into overdrive...more like crying, begging for relief. And today it was a mild 83, which felt like spring all over again after the last three weeks. And so I thought about lilacs, even though it's the lillies that are blooming now.

Okay, so it's been more than a year since I posted to this blog. Thanks to my good friend, Brian, who steadily encourages me to get back at it. A year changes a lot of things. In January 2005, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I hate writing that down and seeing the word CANCER stare back at me. It's seven months since diagnosis. I have been through the surgery, the chemotherapy, the rotten side-effects which are too numerous and make me too whiney to enumerate. I am now bald and tired, but I am alive and so is my garden.

All during the chemo process, people would tell me to slow down, rest, blah, blah, blah. They usually said this to me after I had spent the day puttering in my garden while they had watched TV inside. What I can't seem to get anyone else to understand, and which I don't really understand myself, is that being in my garden makes me feel better. I can forget the numb hands and feet, the nausea, the metallic taste of everything. I focus instead on the green sprouts pushing their way out of the moist earth, the flowers that so joyously spring from pots and beds, the weeds that try disguising themselves as worthy plants and hide among the keepers.

The weeds. I often think of the cancer as I yank them by their roots. Weeding has become great therapy for me. With each one I grasp and extract, I imagine myself doing so to cancer cells hiding among the worthy flesh. "You're outta there!" And I am getting better. The hair is slowly growing back. I have more days that I'm not tired than days when I am. My garden is healing me.

Another great change this past year is in the family structure. My married daughter, her husband and baby son moved back in with us in September. It's a little crowded and the messes are a little more, but the compensation of their continual company more than makes up for it. Especially Jacob. Jacob, now two, loves to be "outhide" with "Mima". I'm Mima, and he doesn't say his s's very well. (Left is a picture of Jacob and me taken three days before my diagnosis of cancer. I had hair still!) Watering is Jacob's favorite outhide job, followed closely by deadheading and anything that has to do with a "shubble". Finally! Someone who will dig in the dirt with me. He's great company, although I admit I spend a lot of time chasing after him to make sure he's still in the garden, not wandering out the gates or trying to swim in the pond. All of this checking up on him gives me a lot of breaks, which is probably good for me. I've never been terribly smart about pacing myself in the garden.

I promise myself--I'll get back to blogging more regularly. For now though, roses need deadheading, I've got to figure out what to plant now that I ripped out the peas (and the peas were wonderful this year!), and Jacob wants to go outhide.

I sat on the porch and watched the fish this morning. It was a goldfish orgy in my pond. I’ve never seen the likes—menage e trios, fish swapping and more as the little gold, white and black flecked bodies undulated all over each other and the algae. I’m hoping there won’t be a fish population explosion. I may be finally forced to calculate how many fish can stay healthy in my 8,000 gallon pond.

Speaking of algae, it’s out of control. I’ve five water lilies, a stand of yellow flags (water iris), miniature cattails, corkscrew reeds, variegated iris and parrot plant and thriving, but it’s not anywhere near the 70% shade level needed to control the algae. I better get some UV blocker dye right away before it gets totally out of balance in there.

I broke the last weir on the waterfall a week ago. I was balanced precariously on slippery stones reaching to pluck errant sunflowers--who thought it might be fun to grow in the stream—when the precarious side overcame the balance part and I kerplunked forward onto the granite flagstone that was cemented in place as the final cascade from waterfall to pond. And now a week later dear hubby has gone golfing twice and still not found the time to set a new stone in place. The serendipity of the whole accident? We were always disappointed that the weir stone was really too short for the opening, so we “spliced” in two smaller flagstones on either side. This time DH decided to get the right size stone. He did at least make it to the stone store (quarry, yard?) on Saturday. I do believe I will encourage him with all my might tomorrow to get it set in place.

The harder I work in my garden, the less I post…but never enough “thyme”, eh? Working full time leaves me only a half hour or so in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening if I’m up to it. I can’t even visit all my plant friends in that limited time frame—so the work is left for Saturday. For instance, last Saturday, I got into the garden at 7:00 AM and finally went in at 8:00 PM. That would be against the law for an employer to extract that sort of labor with no breaks, but in my garden I’m mesmerized, rejuvenated and relaxed, even as the sweat runs into my eyes and the twinges in my back remind me I’m "plenty-nine" years old. During the week I can spend a few Zen hours watering or plucking an errant plant here or there…those things some might call weeds. Here is what I learn when watering: it’s good to be fluid. Flow into the spaces that present themselves and refresh the life around you. Seems a good metaphor to live by. The picture is of my nieces Kaylee and Lizzie enjoying the fluid nature of the stream in my front yard.

Today I am sunburned. Every year I tell myself I'll be smarter and not stay out so long early in the spring when my skin is pale and vulnerable from a winter of staying indoors. But the garden pulls me and I can't say no. Things are growing! In the season of dividing the living from the dead, I am the Gardener who clears away the crust of winter’s grip. I’m in the garden by 8:00 AM on Saturday, intending to work for a few hours. But suddenly I blink and the sun is low in the western sky. I scurry to finish planting pansies, haul one more load of compost. People think me crazy, but truly, I am entranced by my garden. Meaning the hours flow by without my noticing—I must be in some sort of altered state of consciousness. Who in their right mind is revived by 10 hours or more of hard labor? Only a gardener. When I come in, my feet ache, my mouth is dry and my hands are slowly desiccating. I know the month of the year by the amount of dirt permanently embedded at the sides of my nail and the cracks in my fingers. I am a gardener. Today is the Sabbath and I am usually at church. A day of rest. I believe in that firmly, but today was General Conference for my church and regular meetings aren’t held. I thought I’d only plant a flat of pansies I didn’t get to last night, so I plugged in the radio to listen to Conference and before I knew it, it was 4:00 P.M.. I planted the pansies, dug up and transplanted hollyhocks and divided and potted up perennials to exchange at a plant swap this week. Some in my faith might say I broke the Sabbath. But God and I walked together in my garden today. Maybe He’ll forgive me.

I've been pruning my roses. I never think about how many I have in my 1/4 acre yard--until I start to prune. There are twenty-six roses scattered through the yard. I'm not one for the formal, stiff looking "rose garden". My roses hold their own among the hollyhocks, daises, zinnias, lambs ear, chives, and hundreds of other plants woven into my cottage-garden style flowerbeds. I can't really call them borders, because in the traditional sense of the word, I have no border. I have no lawn. I only have planting areas massed with flowers, a 20 foot by 12-foot vegetable plot and paths, patios and porches. But I digress...back to the roses.

I have six climbers--two in back, four in the front. The photo to the left is of my climbing New Dawn in the back. I also have three David Austen antique English roses, four hybrid teas, seven miniature roses, five in pots and one tree rose (a standard form of a tea). Twenty-six all together! Well, alas, twnety-fix now--no tree rose I must confess...because I've decided the tree rose is D.U.S.... Dead Upon Spring. Sigh. I always lusted after a tree rose, splurged last year and the thing succumbed to winterkill. Should I have put him in the ground instead of a large pot? Should I have burlaped and coddled the poor critter? Well then, away with him! I don't have the time or patience for high-maintenance plants. (Sandra, my good friend, says I should call myself The Ruthless Gardener.) I'll try another tree rose this spring and then see what next year brings. Ah, the eternal optimism of the gardener.
I've been pruning off and on for three weeks now. My arms and hands are in a continual state of scratched dishabille. In the War of the Roses, I’m never sure if I’m victorious until the first blooms spill their fragrance in the early summer air. But still I perform the yearly triage—a dead branch here, a broken one there, and worst of all the healthy one growing in the totally wrong direction. It’s thorns in my heart to cull those wildly growing but WRONG shoots, but ruthless I am and ruthless I’ll stay.

It rained today. This is a good thing in March after nearly three weeks of record temperatures. Not middle of desert scorch temperatures we get in July, but still. It was something more decadent feeling--70 degrees in mid-March! The bulbs, like wine-muddled debutantes the day after the ball, stretch luxuriously towards the warmth. Crocuses have come and gone, brief flashes of light in the gray mornings of early spring, and now the daffodils nod to the pansies at their feet, beckoning the tulips to hurry and dance in the sun.
And then rain came today, gray and cold, reminding us that March at the feet of the mountains is meant to morph winter to spring with a slow grace. We’ve forgotten that this year, the bulbs and I. I’ve had to remind the daffodils, those sad ladies bending their cup faces to the ground today, mourning the loss of the sun. I’ve told them to think of the peas in the vegetable garden and to be patient. April’s grace isn’t far away.

I have to give credit to Brian F., my muse (or would that be bluse?) for inspiring me to share my garden views with the world. I'll think of my views later, but for now, I'm seeing if this is set up right and people can find it. Today the crocus are dying back but the daffodils are out and pansies are turning their leonine faces to the sun. It's March. It's spring--the season of beginnings.