Green Beginnings

Spring seems to be making an appearance today, though we're technically still on the "in like a lion" end of March, the "out like a lamb" is going to take some time, still. Nevertheless, let's hope the snowy days are at an end and that we can slowly begin to shed the layers of fleece and wool that we've been swaddled in since October.

I went out to the front yard today and gathered up some debris. In New York the winter debris in a front yard is not limited to the usual twigs and leaves, but includes chewing gum wads, twinkie wrappers, and countless cigarette butts, bits of styrofoam, car-service coupons, and wet Chinese menus. Usually on my way in I'll use my cane to scoop out one or two offending bits of trash, but over the course of the winter things accumulate and as the snow melted yesterday it revealed quite a collection. Sometimes its the neighborhood raccoons; they enjoy snacking on the trash and will occasionally wash it in the birdbath, leaving a half-bagel or a chicken leg as a calling card. As destructive as they are, their sins are more easily forgiven than those of human passersby who think nothing of flicking a wad of Juicy Fruit into one of my rosebushes, or leaving a half-can of Old English 800 lying on its side amid the irises.I have become one of those old people who scared me as a child, muttering on my stoop and waving my broom at miscreants, ranting about manners and how the world is falling apart as I fish half empty Snapple bottles out of the birdbath.

I swept and clipped, raked and smoothed, and as I worked I took note of all the little green shoots of various kinds making their appearance. I can see the beginnings of tulips, daffodils, crocuses, irises, hyacinths (grape and otherwise), and the little pink nubs on the rose canes heralding the arrival of the day when the front is transformed from gray and brown to green and lush. The neighbors I had barely seen since October began drifting out onto their stoops, unwrapped from their winter layers and recognizable as themselves, everyone smiling and calling out cheerful greetings, waving, pointing to the blue sky and the green beginnings below. As people walk up the hill they smile when they see my garden with its rows of green spikes twice the size they were yesterday, babies in strollers hold out their little starfish hands to touch the leaves as their moms or dads call out the probable names of the flowers to come. I sipped my coffee on the porch, grateful for the sunshine, grateful for the opportunity to make something beautiful, and smile back, we are all complicit in this conspiracy, eager to see the beauty in this world.