I am in overdrive. The weeds and grasses are flying out of the gardens; new stones edge the work. My big gate hangs, fixed; the star and the Fleur de lis are painted and drying. I am getting ready for spring, because the gardens are getting ready for spring. Young bluebonnets are everywhere in the lawn and fields, and the Gregg’s Mist flower is sprouting, and the big oaks are shedding and the coral sages are budding.

It feels good to dig in the earth. It was my respite during my wife’s illness. I dug khaki weed out of our entire yard, by hand, over the course of five years, while maintaining garden paths, and pulling bindweed. Then she passed, and I ran. I tried tending the gardens with one hand, but the disrepair spread until this year, when I told it to stop, and now it is, because I’m back on my knees in the dirt and the weeds and the grasses are flying.

I’m also paying homage to my age and shrinking the garden footprint a bit because I still have places to go with people I like, and that takes energy. But, I’m no longer digging to hide, I’m digging to build. Sure, my tears have wet the earth, but it’s time for a new tune in the gardens and I’m going to conduct it, bring it forth in this season whose time has come and to which I now turn. An old man, but new, with a final movement yet to be played.