Tuesday, May 21, 2013

regifting

These days I never get things I don't need or love. My family is small, my gift giving circle of friends is small too and if the rare gift is given, it's with thought and understanding. One of the more recent gifts that came my way was with a message -- if you don't like it or have it already, regift it.

I thought about this tonight as Ed and I got in the car to raid another garden. This one, just north of Madison boasted (on Craigs list) over a hundred perennials dug up from the owner's yard and the prices were minimal. It's as if making money is not the point.

Ed asks often -- why don't you just divide your own old plants, instead of looking for new ones? I do divide! But as long as we expand gardening space at the rate that we do, there will be room for even more.

Our evening ride to pick out bits and pieces of perennials from the yard of Joel (thank you, Joel!) is beautiful: the colors are warm, the air is perfect.


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The day was to bring storms, but it didn't do that. It brought calm. A guilty calm, because we know that others do not share in it.

But if it is that -- a guilty calm -- then it comes with an obligation: to share, to regift, as it were -- out of the abundance that will soon flood our gardens.


In other news -- well, the non news of breakfast on the porch...


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... a walk to the new orchard, to inspect the young trees and to be rewarded with a bloom on one of them...


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...and then, back on the porch for exam grading...


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...with an occasional break to plant a flower...


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...and finally the evening ride for the plants, and the return, home again, in the honey glow of a late spring evening.


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