I feel centered around flowers and plants.  I've recently rediscovered this and, after dozens of years of hiatus, have become, once again, a professional floral designer.  In the northeast, this time of year is especially grand at a florist/plant shop/nursery as everyone and everything gears up for Easter, Mother's Day, and the summer growing season. Cut flowers fill the refrigerator in more abundant colors and varieties. Shipments of pots, seeds, supplies and plants begin to arrive daily. Multitudes of pansies fill the benches outside, but most outdoor flowers have not yet arrived for us here in New England. A few petunias hang in the greenhouse, but new owners will keep them inside for now. Temperatures are still too cool outdoors. So gardeners roam, pace, and dream about the coming months and all the pleasure to come as they work the soil, tend and plant, welcome the water, and watch the lush and colorful results. Here, we wait a little longer for the natural world to come alive, literally, and maybe we enjoy it all the more.

As I arranged a glass cube of white daisy mums and pink roses on the floral counter, a customer caught my attention. She was elderly and silver haired, her back curved more like a crescent moon than a plant stake, and she could not move particularly fast. She shuffled, in sensible shoes, peering through her eyeglasses at different displays, with no obvious purpose, and yet, the energy she gave off was not aimless.  She came over and asked me a question, a question which I can not recall now because I am so consumed by what she said afterward.  I know I answered her question, and she nodded.  Then a powerful energy beamed out of her blue eyes as she speared me with her gaze, firmed her carriage, and proclaimed in a low but vibrant voice, "I can not wait to plant." Like a lioness, my dowager gardener emitted this growl of impatience, of warning. The call to be a part of this verdant cycle of life and and rebirth spoke to her, still, and she needed to act.

When she left, frustration trailed behind her, for the time was not yet, not planting season quite yet for her and whatever her garden visions entailed. But she was wrong. She had planted a seed within me, a glimpse of a white-haired future where the urge to happily drown in this lively lushness still thrives.  Mere days later, this seed sprouts, and already, sends off shoots...       

Ah, spring. Your promise is truly eternal.