“The beauty of a garden can be told by anyone, but the story of a garden resides beneath the fingernails, and in the sore muscles of a few designated laborers. We reached the gas station just north of our destination by 9:30 am, in a downpour. Suddenly it looked like our work day might be going downstream, despite a favorable forecast. “They win the best sandwiches award”, she said, hopping back in the truck, with a full bag of groceries. I’d been pumping gas. “This is so not what the radar predicted,” I said. We sat for a minute, both looking forward thru the windshield, at a steady stream of water, that hadn’t lessened, since we’d parked. She checked her phone. “It’s mostly north of here. Who knows - it might be dry when we get there.” However unlikely that seemed, we pulled back onto the two-lane, and continued driving south. “I’m stopping at the Barnard store,” I said, “and we can reevaluate from there”. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into our expected parking spot, at the store. The precipitation had let up some, and I looked at the surrounding pavement. “Some of it’s dry”, I said. “It can’t have rained here for very long”. We sat and looked out the front windshield, at nothing much, but what it was, did seem drier. “I have to get something in my stomach,” I said, and jumped out. There was no point in getting to the job early. Flower gardening is not a water sport. We needed to kill time, or give up, and go home. I admit, I was not in the mood to lose a day’s income. I would do what it took, to get in a day’s work, even if it meant dilly-dallying with a coffee and a sticky bun, for another half an hour. Soon I was back in the truck, with my bag of groceries. “She just mooned him”, she said. “What?” I said? “That girl on the porch. She just ... you know ... mooned her boyfriend”. it was a little more than I could take in, but I followed her gaze, looking up towards the cement porch, by the community bulletin board, where a couple were hanging out. The scene appeared to be fairly generic. “You see things that I would never see,” I offered. “And, you see things that I would never see,” she answered. Our day continued smoothly from there, as the day cleared, and a soft breeze tempered the heat, and the humidity. We found ourselves in the midst of June bloom, on a higher hill top, that probably is on no one’s radar. As the sun warmed us, and the clouds dodged around it, we fell into a familiar pattern. Buckets, tools, the piercing calls of birds, the bites of insects, the wiggly conversation of worms, and watering cans sloshing their contents, filled at the pond. Sculpting in nature’s living studio, the cascades of color and form we’d hoped would bring forth this much pleasure.”
