Spring Week 10

I sat exhausted in the garden Sunday evening as I’d overdone it again. Each spring I must re-learn the limitations of this body of mine. All of my “Magic and Genius” of the weekend had taken away too much, so all I could do was sit. I perched on a bench and asked Matthew to mow this patch and that in the backyard. Each pass making the intentional wildness of the pond and the garden beds more pronounced, more special.

It was just after 8 PM so the sun was in that special spot. That golden hour that makes everything we’ve built backlit and glowing. The clematis given to us 11 years and one day prior as a wedding gift was in full bloom, as it is each May, or “anniversary season”. As I witnessed one solitary purple petal glide to the ground, I felt something inside pulling me back to that day 11 years ago. The morning that we woke to each flower pedal of the dogwood tree on the ground. That tree had stuck it out and held onto those lovely white flowers just for us, just for our wedding day. The day we promised that we would love one another forever, in front of our most beloved family and friends, as we stood under the dogwood tree that decades prior, his fathers’ mother and little sister brought from the forest. Thanks be to Millie and Stacy for believing that the little tree would endure. And thanks be to the Websters for giving us a gift that has lived and grown with us, a repeated reminder of the magic in connection, nature and time travel.