Unspoken Messages

"Are you ready to order, or shall I come back."

I think so. Yes, I am ready to order. Myself, order myself, reorder my molecules and begin again. Ha, I laugh at the odd approach to the simple word. I imagine a game of chinese checkers with the marbles rolling around until they hit their little circles and stay put, all in order.

"I'd like a mocha, please."

There is a swirl of air currents after the young man as he leaves. He is in such a hurry, but he has nice eyes that look kind. He is not impatient. I see he is moving from table to table, looking for missing forks, unfilled glasses, and guests who need more coffee. He is attentive and quick, and his eyes are warm.

I twiddle my iPhone and look at yesterday's images, taken when I was sitting in a different diner, sitting across from red leather and gleaming chrome, polished steel, a room without life but colorful nonetheless. I look around this room and listen to it.  There are voices nearby, but I cannot hear words. I look at the walls, the pictures hanging askew on the wall, and hear the distant bustle and clang of the kitchen workers.

The flowers in the vase on my table are bright and cheerful, dying to get my attention. Ah, dying. Yes, unfortunately dying little bit by little bit, small degrees of loss of their vitality. I look at them very carefully. It used to be that the colors of flowers and the blossoms themselves spoke messages from a person who gave them to the one who received them. Red always represented love and passion. Roses, daisies, irises and chrysanthemums all had their implicit meaning, conveying something far beyond mere words.

I lean in and wonder what this bouquet of bright life means, what message I would have known if I had lived a hundred years ago.  I fiddle with the flowers, touching their soft petals and delicate coolness. I pull out a few withered and spent pieces. Ah, they are dying to tell me something? A small feeling of their desperate signaling overcomes me. I lean in and detect - fragrance? No. Just beauty, simply beauty standing silently in a vase, quietly perfect.

The young man brings the cup of mocha and sets it before me. His eyes again. I see the warm life in his eyes and the room around him, hear the murmuring people who are eating their food and sipping their coffee. I am glad that it's not quiet.

Life Is

While the light was still rising and the day was still fresh, my garden, modest, small and quiet, simply existed.

Luckily for me, I went and looked at its little glories.  

How fine this bit of life looked today, dressed in lavendar.  An iris:  Exquisite, silent, perfect, asked nothing, not even admiration. If I had not noticed, what then? It bloomed anyway, with or without my attention.  It had gathered in all the loveliness of Spring and offered it as six petals on a stem.

Who says there is no magic in the universe?  

Flowers Help Me Wait

Today is not the kind of day one runs outside with a song in one's heart as the sun bursts into view and birds sing.  The birds are soggy and huddled on the leeward side of trees, and the sun is staying put in the tropics, thumbing its nose at us who are inundated by rain and buffeted by wind.

There are many things we can call upon, tools in our toolboxes, that we can use to get through the gloom and gray of wet weather.  I like to play good music and move around indoors, which usually does the trick.  If that doesn't work, one must root around in one's "toolbox" for other devices to ward off inertia.  Plenty of storms that plunder trees of their flowers and weakened branches make one feel intimidated and reluctant to move off of the sofa or out of bed, wishing it would all go away.

Two days ago, when I was scurrying to the grocery store to get out of the wind and wet, I saw a display of fresh flowers, grabbed some and continued on about my shopping.  Having the little beauties at my side as I went up and down the aisles did me a lot of good, and they look cheerful now on my kitchen table.  I love flowers no matter what.  It seems to be they are a really good gloom antidote, so I keep them around, ready to cheer me every time I re-enter my kitchen or any other room where I can keep them.

Surely the rain will cease someday soon and the flowers outside will bloom as in no other year.  Spring is here, on paper, but the season has yet to warm us in real life.  I'm ready, very ready, with my flowers cheering me as I wait.

They Changed My Mind

Before dawn, the downspouts from the roof gutters were dripping and pinging, the patio was damp and, noticing the wet sounds outside, my heart sank.  I'd heard big stories on the news services the night before.  Floods in Pakistan, extreme heat and wildfires in Russia, the oil disaster in the gulf, worry and threat of war, overpopulation.  Nothing any one person can feel effective against.  Up out of bed, I checked the weather report.  It called for a "heavy marine layer" again, all day.  The whole area was going to be socked in and cold, more than usual.  Awake but off center, I shuffled to the kitchen for coffee and thought about I could do.  

I tried writing.  No luck.  I mumbled to myself about my lack of progress while I deleted everything.  I tried all the other stuff that I usually do when I can't think of anything to write.  Cleaned things, sorted books, sifted through piles of notes and resifted them, rearranged items in the refrigerator.  Browsed online, looked at the sky, tried to imagine sunshine, ate a few snacks.  I got distracted by something and then got distracted from that.  I was not inspired by any of it.  

Exasperated, I made up my mind.  I needed to do something physical, some work, make a little progress so I could have something to show I'd not just been lying in the middle of the floor staring at the ceiling all day. I dressed in a fleece overshirt, thick T-shirt, work pants, gardening shoes, and stepped outside.  A cold wind grabbed me by the ears.

"It's freakin' January!" I heard myself squall.  Snow could fall and it would have been no colder, must have been 40 degrees with the wind chill added in.  How could Russia be burning up?  In all the gloom and gray, I saw hundreds of flowers bobbing and looking preposterously summery.  If I hadn't looked up and seen them, I would have scurried right back into the house.  

Against the logic that says everything should be frostbitten in this dour summer cold, my plants are ignoring the dreary weather and blooming like they live in the tropics.  The little darlings don't mock me.  Instead, their pure beauty wipes away my pessimism, changes my outlook.  Not a word said, and I'm standing a little taller and thinking, "It happens every time."  

I set to work.  Dozens of plants have taken up residence in my yard over the years, including my yellow roses.  They wouldn't really survive in my yard if it weren't for me watering and feeding, true enough.  But, I have been repaid a thousandfold every time I dig my hands in the soil.  

I deadheaded the spent blossoms, weeded, watered, and generally spent time re-examining each of the 40 or so living things in containers in my yard.  The genes of all the plants were telling them to grow, make use of the long summer sunlight hours, thrive, resist extinction.  

Every different flower was flying like a little flag of resilience, bright and simple.  They are out there  renewing themselves, capable of myriad ways to live on in the face of daunting circumstances.  They're adaptable, tenacious and beautiful.  I don't need to be original; nature's original.  I just need to pay attention to what's real, to the natural world, and learn it.

The sun was captured in the colors of the flowers, divided among them, describing light and color with form and dimension that sunlight doesn't have in and of itself.  I had never thought of flowers exactly as heroes before.  They're usually passed off as pretty diversions that give visual pleasure, decorate vistas, surprise one with color, but the exquisite complexity of their structure, the very nature of flowering and the cycle of life is nothing short of profound.  Nice to know I didn't really need sunlight beating down on me today, that a few dozen plants with petals and stems and leaves could teach me about appreciation and humility.   

A Growing Hobby

I spent a pretty good amount of time pruning, trimming, sweeping and transplanting today.  Several hours as a matter of fact.  The yard had begun to look like it was getting ready to take over the whole town.  It was a growing insurrection.  

Gardening is like most hobbies.  You are so innocent at the outset. You start out with a plant, a pot and some dirt.  You have a little bit of success, the plant lives for a while and, if it's edible - an herb, say - you get the idea you can grow something else that's useful. Before too long, you have several plants and a few odds and ends, pots, saucers, a trowel.  It's pretty fun!  Then, you get some gloves, then better gloves, and then a few snippers and some fertilizer.  One thing leads to another.  Seed catalogs, gardening books, hoses and watering cans gradually appear.  It's looking like you're ready to feed the whole family, and the bounty of the garden is becoming life-changing, inspirational.  

Then you meet your nemeses.

Bugs arrive in everyone's garden sooner or later.  Death on six (or more) legs.  One day you have beautiful flowers that bob happily in the spring breeze.  The next, you have a sickly yellowed mess.  En masse, bugs descend on your little beauties like Hells Angels arriving at a violin recital.  And there you are trying to fend them off with nontoxic (wimpy) products that you hope desperately will work.  You don't really want to poison anything, especially the earth you've become so proud of.  Earwigs, snails, slugs, aphids, spittlebugs.  Just their names give you the creeps.

Your gardening book says, "Give your plants a blast with the hose to remove aphids and other clinging pests."  Simple enough.  You blast away and really kind of enjoy it, a Valkyrie dispatching the enemy like the unworthy and sullen beings that they are.  Trouble is, the blasts of water also serve to disperse the bugs to other plants where they cling and thumb their noses at you, blow raspberries and plot certain revenge.

You keep trying, remembering the wonderful array of flowers and herbs you'd managed to grow before the Huns arrived in all their hordes, and you have a little luck.  You learn that beer set out in shallow dishes attracts snails and slugs.  You cheer for ladybugs who are said to eat aphids like candy.

You also learn to get out early in the day to check your plants before the little dears have been beaten down by the heat of the midday sun (well, okay, that doesn't often happen here in the Groove, but it's still wise to get out early even in the fog), check for damage overnight, admire the morning blooms of the day lilies and see the dew on the roses as they open.

The big payoff is always what you reap after the battles have been waged and your patience has been strained to the breaking point.  That is, you have an armful of flowers to set in a vase or you have a handful of food to add to the table for the next meal.  Bringing in a harvest, no matter how small, has few equals.  It's well worth the work, by any measure.

I brought in lemons and roses today.  I am thrilled to say I can pick mint, oregano, thyme, rosemary and lavendar when I need them.  Quite a few plants are budding or blooming.  Life is good and actually pretty simple; you really realize it out in a garden.  Just watch out for bugs on Harleys.

Lucky Stars

The Groove is bustling today and full of energy, although it is a bit cool and breezy.  It's just a good excuse to run indoors every so often and count your lucky stars, protected from the chill.  There are a few key sun-bathed walls you can find downtown where there is total shelter from the cold wind.  You can roast for a bit and then dash for the next one as you go out and about on your errands.

Speaking of lucky stars, I have a friend who's a creative house painter and who paints the sky up there on the overhead plaster.  You feel like you're flying when you wake up in the morning.  I'd like stars on the ceiling, lucky stars.

Spring continues to feel brisk and blowy out on the bay, which translates to layers of clothing during the day and bundling up at night.  Not too far inland, folks are feeling more heat during the day.  In summer, which is a barely noticeable change from winter here, fog will come creeping over us.  But, for now, we have sun and a whole host of flowers blooming wildly everywhere.  Even the most neglected gardens look terrific.

Which reminds me,  my garden is calling my name, in need of much attention for the next few months.  Lemon tree, herbs, flowers, vines and ground cover are all growing fast, so fast you can almost hear them.  It's good work, and I love to do it.