Measuring Marigolds

Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds.
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are.

It was an early Schaum or Fletcher Method piano lesson. I think of it every time I see an inch worm measuring the garden. Apparently there is a bumper crop this year, dropping and hanging from the trees; a gift of the warm winter. A whole lotta measuring going on.

A whole lot of growing going on, too. It's too much outpouring for the worms to keep up. The giant hosta has spent the last three weeks growing its tight leaves taller; and suddenly overnight this week, they begin unfurling. The banana leaves are waving in the breeze and the iris are opening in all their complexity. The evergreen Autumn Brilliance fern is going crazy with its embryonic new growth, and the Ostrich fern gets taller before my eyes. The roses are budding, the salvia is blooming, the feathery tiarella is open atop its slender stalk. The Japanese maple that I rescued from smothered oblivion, rises scarlet and triumphant above the gardenia.


The trees that surround the back yard are clothed in spring green against Carolina blue skies, with subtle purple wisteria hanging high in the branches. I know the wisteria is not good for the trees, but it is beautiful. I have certainly engaged in things beautiful that weren't good for me; but to have not had the connection would have left me less the person that I am. So I enjoy the brief wisteria season. As I sit under the dogwood, its Easter white blooms giving way to green leaves, a ballet of baby moths rises in a choreographed cloud from the grass.

I spend last weekend pulling weeds. I have said before that I enjoy pulling weeds, making space in the garden. Most of all I love the surprise of uncovering the perennials hiding under the weeds: the Mexican petunia, the gaura, the balloon flower. I pull new growth English ivy every once in a while. Its shiny green new leaves are a reminder in stark contrast of the mountains of dark leaves and hairy vines I pulled five years ago, and four, that was the beginning of the restoration of the garden and the healing of my heart. Like the garden, I am a different being now; as I healed the garden, the garden healed me.

Carpenter bees are at work under the deck rail. I don't know what to do about them. Unlike termites, they are harmless to the structure--at least in the deck rail where I observe them. They don't consume wood; they merely drill a beautiful, near-perfectly round half-inch hole in which to lay their eggs; the female then partitions it to suit her (genius). They are big and bumbly and loud; but the males don't sting, the females rarely. They don't party, but are seen in the singular--much like me. The babies don't stick around. The riddance method is distasteful to me: fill the hole with caulk with the bee inside. They have a right to be, and I am going to let them.

It is a Smudge weekend. A return to the vet on Friday shows her glucose skyrocketing and her weight dropping dangerously. We are back to twice daily insulin injections. It was a nice vacation. Yesterday, while sweeping, I find one of her teeth on the floor. I thought several weeks ago something wasn't right with that tooth. She doesn't seem to be bothered by its loss; most likely she is better off without it, as we all are when something is poking uncomfortably. Both events are reminders that she is aging; and that one day--like dear Santi who said goodbye to her beloved Bella Dona this week--another loss will just about break my heart. Yesterday she brings me a dead robin, as if to tell me she's still feisty and strong. No goodbyes just yet. 

A thunderstorm rumbles through in the night. It reverberates in the distance, rolling slowly closer and louder; like a freight train crescendoing up the track; its continuous, resonant echo coming, coming, coming. The rain adds its patter on the roof, the number of drops bouncing off the shingles doubling and tripling every few moments. Weaving through the percussion, a siren whines; closer, closer, closer. After many long minutes the climax arrives: booming bass, pounding rain and hail, piercing siren. It passes without pause and decrescendos to the north; going, going, going.

Had I awoken only to the storm at it height; should I pay attention to the garden only at its peak; had I not had to pull ivy in order to find the garden; if I look only at the highlights of my living, I miss the journey. And the journey is everything. Personally, I think the inch worm does see every beautiful detail of the marigold as it measures it. 

Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment. 

~Ellis Peters