Birds chirping in such voluminous quantity that they sound
like rushing waters, a veritable cascade, waterfall of sound. Hundreds of them
clustered in two oak trees across the street, the trees alive with song.
A small woodpecker tap-tap-taps his way to dinner above my
head. I have my hands in dirt, holding
the rhizomes of lilies—daylilies, oriental lilies, who-knows-what lilies. I hold in my hands life, the life of a
plant. They are tired, crowded and none
of them bloomed this year. It was too
hot too soon for me to do any work of significance in the garden. Now it is
fall, and almost too hot but not quite, so I am forking them up from the ground
where they have grown together so densely I can barely insert the fork, to
separate them from one another and give them a chance at new flowering life
next year in my daughter’s garden.
Blithely, I tear them apart, thumping them on the brick
walkway to shake loose the dirt. This
does not hurt them; instead it stimulates them to grow, to make leaves to drink
in the sunshine that will give them the power to bloom. Ah, the sexuality of plants! Make love to the sun and give birth to
flowers.
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