Keeping On

Went for a short walk this morning. Down the drive, out the gate, and back. It was the Tuesday morning taking out the trash walk. I noticed someone did a lousy job of turning around by my driveway. Tore up some ground and loosened a few stones of the driveway’s edging. Nothing beyond repair. Thought perhaps I should put up something to mark the driveway’s end. We’ll see.

On the walk back, I admired my lawn of freshly mown, newly sprouted winter grasses. After giving the lawn it’s due, I stopped to enjoy the waning gibbous moon hanging low and semi-full over the tops of the bare limbed trees and shedding oaks. The look up was followed by a look down, to the flower bed beneath the crape myrtle where the Hyacinth I bought my wife one Christmas is budding out. It’s the first of the spring blooms.

Obviously, I wish she were here to enjoy it, but that’s not to be. So, I shall do it for her, which is hardly a burden, because I like the flower, too. And as I look at the little plant with its leaves burned by ice and cold, it’s a good reminder that getting on with it is what life tries to do even in the face of hardship, and in case I miss the point the big oaks are dropping dead leaves on my head as they get ready to bloom, I hope. Overall, I think that’s the point of Easter and Spring, rebirth, something new springing from the debris of something old, and unlike the little hyacinth, I can actually decide what to make of it.