Saturday morning I slept until 11am. That told me my body was needing rest. I'm a morning person. By Saturday night I knew I was heading into a sinus infection. Last year I was in bed for 8 days! 8 DAYS IN THE SPRING!!! I couldn't work in the yard, I couldn't enjoy my flowers or the beautiful warm days of early May. All because of that sinus infection.

I've gone holistic. I was ready for this. I've studied essential oils and what to use when. I put my eucalyptus and my lemon scented tea tree oil in my humidifier and went to the guest room to sleep. 

I stayed in bed all day Sunday. I used grapefruit seed spray for my nose and the Neti pot with salt and soda. I drank apple cider vinegar in water and felt terrible all day long. Until about 5 o'clock. 

Something broke up inside of me. I took a sudden turn for the better. YEAH! I don't have to be sick!!!

I'm still congested a little, but I  know what I'm doing is working. 

Whenever I get sick the minute I start feeling better I immediately think of something strenuous to do so that I can over-do-it and maybe get sick all over again. All these things come into my mind that I didn't do while I was in bed and I think, well, here's an hour of daylight, why don't I go out in the yard and dig, plant, clean up, take the recycle to the curb, walk the dogs and deadhead the pansies and pull a few weeds.

So, that's what I did.

I go out almost every evening at about 6 o'clock to play in my flower bed. I listen to the robins and doves calling to each other from the giant oak tree that looms over my street.

 Last night was different. It had rained Saturday night and most of Sunday. Martha and I had baked bread on Friday until late afternoon and when I got home I was too exhausted to do anything except cook a little supper and watch a movie with Billy.

I'm figuring I lost about 48 hours of observing of light, leaves, shadows, the wind. I guess that explains why I was a little stunned last night when I went out in my front yard. The canopy had returned.

I've been working in the late afternoons in sunlight. All winter I've done a few things here and there in the yard. I put tulips out after Thanksgiving. I raked leaves, mulched. I planted pansies. And since March, since the first inklings of spring, I've gone out to the yard in the evenings and enjoyed the sunlight. What a gentle time, what a gentle light it is and how precious it was to me. The canopy of thick dense leaves that covers my yard had been pulled back, the trees have been naked, and I've allowed myself to enjoy it, to treasure it to bask in it even though I knew darn well what lay ahead.

And last night was the night. It was all over. No more sunlight for my little garden. 

The trees are flapping at me now. There's a cool spring wind blowing this morning and from where I sit the show is spectacular and alive and full of movement and newness. The leaves are back. And they are dancing. The leaves are back and they are dictating to me what will grow in my front yard. The canopy has returned. 

It was only yesterday when the shadows on my street were thin spindly pitiful specimens of shadows. But look! Now they are large and smooth, cool and dark and they will remain with us until November.

I have all these problems. My neighbor has planted an oak tree in her front yard. I can't believe how much the former sapling has grown since we moved in 3 years ago. By next year the tree will loom over the little strip of dirt where I grow basil, chives and marigolds. 

Yesterday morning when the rain was coming down in buckets this same neighbor was out in my front yard, umbrella in hand, bending over to get my New York Times out of a mud puddle. She sloshed to my front porch and tossed it in out of the rain. What a kind gesture! And yet her graceful little oak tree plots evil against my stubby, desperate marigolds.

Things are out of control. The world is doing its thing. Grackles and sparrows are eating my bird seed. My neighbor's oak tree is stealing my sunlight. My face has wrinkles. And I myself am a mere form, and all this work that I do is just like me. It is being born so that it can die. The transmutation of forms, from one form to another; that is all I see.

I went to Covington a couple of weeks ago to do some work in my Aunt Velma's garden. If obsessions can be inherited then I guess that's where I got mine. Her perennial bed was born about 60 years ago.
When I first got interested in gardening, I was in my twenties and I was crazy about growing vegetables. She said, "Melinda, that's exactly how I got started. But watch out for flowers. Once you grow a flower you won't want to grow anything else."
I'll never forget those words. They were so true!
And her flower garden is her passion and has been low these 60 years. Now she's 90 years old and there so much she simply can't do any more.
As I was leaving she spoke. Her brow strained, she peered into the rich composted soil, into her garden, seeing but not  seeing. She said– not to me, not  to anybody–she just said, "When I die and Davie get's this place he'll probably just mow all of this down." She extended her arm out over the beautiful garden, her blood, her sweat, her vision, the journal of her life.
It was as if she spoke to test the waters, to brace herself for the inevitable.

I don't know why, but I guess I got scared. I laughed and said, "The good thing about that is that you won't be here to see it."

And we paused together in silence. A ninety year old gardener has learned the lessons of the garden. The grass withers. The flower fades.

I recently read Eckhart Tolle's book, THE POWER OF NOW. It was a tremendous spiritual experience for me. The now is liberation from the ghosts of the past and freedom from anxiety about the future. Now is all we have.
So now, really now, I am watching the dappling light and shadows dancing outside my window and listening to the deep hollow music of the windchime that hangs at the corner eave. And I accept. I accept. I accept.

 It is what it is.

Grackles, sparrows, and all.