A perfect evening

My yard is full of violets.

Really.

See?

And I happen to know Andy is going to mow the lawn soon. And that violets are edible. How could I let all these lovely flowers go to waste?

I couldn’t.

So I decided to pick a bunch. To dry for later. And use in maybe a floral green tea blend that I make up in the future.

While I was out there picking, Koda kept doing her “dropping the ball near me” thing. I tried to shoo her out of the flowers. Then Columbus decided he wanted to roll in them. Luckily the field of flowers was big enough to work around both these issues.

As I was picking the flowers I felt like a little girl again. Without a care, out in the spring air, picking flowers.

Later I sat down to journal and started reflecting on that little girl. Little did she know life would be full of so many responsibilities when she grew up that she’d forget about picking flowers. Until she was 53. And as I started to get a little sad, my oldest daughter – due with her first baby (and our first grandchild) – called. And we had a nice talk about how things are going. It’s the home stretch now. I remember telling her when she first got pregnant that what I remember about the last trimester was dropping things all the time. And how hard it was to get back up after squatting down to pick them up. And guess what’s happening to her now?

She’s dropping things all the time.

Ah, the circle of life.

All those years of forgetting to pick the flowers were spent being a mom. I didn’t spend as much time in nature, but I spent time nurturing. And now I am rediscovering all the things that took a back seat during that time. My job now, I think, is to remind my children – and to teach my grandchildren – to remember to always go outside and pick flowers. Or throw a ball. Or twirl around. And, always, to breath in nature and let it nourish them to the bone.

And I need to keep reminding myself.

After the phone call, I went out on the porch, closed the door to shut out the sounds of the TV, and sat there snipping off the stems of the rinsed flowers to prep them for drying. The peepers were peeping. And you could hear the silence behind. The weather was the perfect temperature with an ever-so-slight breeze, if you could even call it that.

The feeling of peace that washed over me was like a huge, warm, hug. My heart felt like it was inflating with joy. I realized that I was out there on that porch, alone, smiling. Both on the outside and the inside.

A perfect evening.