Palm Sunday

No politics today. Except my new Bernie Sanders book arrived last week. Liking that. Now no more politics. For today.

Today, after a little weather scare Friday (we got off easy, other people did not) the mostly cloudless, windless next few sunny hours, to energize. The usual healthy people and adorable dogs outside my desk window loving it. Cat Oliver window-watching-tail-twitching. Oliver loving it.

And then growing things.

My late Father was an amazing gardener, and boy was it one of his many happinesses. He kept the most stunning landscapes at family homes in Illinois, and then would guide me on the right plants for my houses in Austin (hostas, liriope, thanks, Dad). (Plus, also in Austin, designed and built my son’s playscape and cabin, working into the environment there.)

Dad soul-nourished an expanding vegetable garden on the edge of a pond in one family home. I testify, fresh-picked tomatoes, warmed with sun, does not get better than that, thanks, Dad). I still see him in memory raking, digging, seeding, harvesting, that garden he so loved.

Now as I write after a perfectly perfect spring evening neighborhood walk, arrived back to find my young next-doors, building planters on legs, for yup, their tomatoes. I told young next-door guy I’d be stealing his tomatoes in July. He told me he’d give them to me for free.

I’m not no-where as good at gardening as my Dad was (and have the allergies including, of all things, regular grass, and strawberry plants), but still there does seem to be some genetic intuition of green growth from him to me.

I’d killed off my lush jades and teeny cypress on the balcony one hot Texas afternoon.

But kept the extremely lovely rose gold and light green pots, now here. Among my favorite things.

So spring. I have new jade plants sprouting in the rose gold pots, and a new cypress tree in the light green pot, getting their water and sun with me, and my Mother, watching over them.

And, seems like what-the-what, still here a pothos ivy from my office, obtained 2001, which my Father and Mother kept for me as I moved around a bit for a few years. Because even I, who stupidly, blue thumb day, put houseplants on a burning hot Texas balcony a year or so ago, duh, seemingly can’t kill off a decades old pothos ivy that my parents saved.