I studied enough science to appreciate the effect of warmth both in protected places (the crooks) and over elevations to understand why this progression moves as it does.  And it conveys a reality that life moves where it will and when it will and there is only so much we can do to force it.  In fact, impatience seems to be one of our cardinal sins- as the girl in Willie Wonka says to her father, "I want it NOW daddy!"

    The gift of age seems to be both the growing understanding of the limitedness of time and yet a better patience with life overall. 

    Each year I watch as my garden comes back in its time, each planting revealing its idea of life for this coming year- some have spread, some have retreated (never due to my ability as a gardener of course), and some may have even disappeared.  And it returns on its schedule.  The various blooms have come to set frames for the year:  there is the shrub given to me on the occasion of my father's death that blooms each year on the week of his birthday, there are the rhododendrons that mark the coming end of the school year and the lilies that celebrate its ending (big in a house with students and a teacher).  The sunflowers hold up the summer until the pumpkin vines provide the markers of fall.

    I suppose among the many reasons I work this garden is because it reminds me again and again to stop, know the season, and listen to it as much as try to tell it what to do.  Sometimes I wonder if I have enough time to do it justice and it reminds me how foolish a consideration that is- ie. I am too busy to make engagement with this garden, something that regenerates me so much, a part of my regular routine.  I think this is the way with many things, seeing them as 'in the way' of our lives instead of 'the way' to our lives.

    So I will continue to watch the green and listen to its sermon.  I will accept the reality of pollen and its nuisance if life is to regenerate.  And in doing so, perhaps the life I rush to find will be revealed as always being here, seen or unseen.