Sad News and Rogue Petunias

Despite what any calendar or groundhog had said, it is certainly Spring where I am. I wake up every morning to festive bird parties outside. My allergies are going haywire. It's getting muggy to the point of being hot and the fleebeejeebies have returned.

Of course, it also means mowing of the lawn must happen. This happened yesterday and while I am glad it did, some other things were brought up in the process. The irises were mowed down because, while they have grown, they never bloomed. My roommate believes they spent all their effort in just growing back, with no thought to reproduction.

While we were on the subject, we concluded that, despite all efforts made, the Juanita Rose more than likely would not be blooming this year. It may surprise us, but . . . again, the summer was horrible. We're lucky any of us survived.

Even though I accepted this rationally, emotionally I was a wreck. I have a relationship to these plants because they are my grandmother's plants. She loved them and tended to them. She would watch for them to bloom and make comments about it like they were her friends. They brought her joy.

Because of this, I would assume, last night I dreamed there was this bright light in the back yard and it woke me up. I knew there wasn't supposed to be a light out there, so I looked outside and saw Gramma walking in the back yard in that sunhat of hers. She looked at me and shook her head at where we had to mow down the irises.

You know, I don't think she was angry at me. Her look was far more analytic. It was like she was processing the weather and the damage and making up her mind about the fate of her plants. Maybe her ghost can tend to them. I hope it tends to the Juanita Rose as well.

In many some form of nature comforting me over all of this, we have some rogue petunias growing by the cellar. Gran used to have a hanging basket of them and I guess over time, some of the seeds fell and finally worked their way to the surface. It's kind of nice, you know, to know that even if some of her flowers can't make it, others find a way to give color to the yard.