Friends Should Be Celebrated

I brought a friend over to visit me yesterday. She's as crazy about gardening as I am but her gardening bug has clipped wings. She is living in public housing. The units in a small town are much more attractive than the high-rises in the cities, but still, the yards are small. The five other people who live in the same block of units she is in are all into gardening in one intensity or another. Their little plots in front of their porches are crowded with common to exotic plants -- such a joy for others to see.

She hasn't had much chance to see our gardens -- she'd been living in Kentucky for a while, but infirmity has brought her out of her hollow back to civilization. I look at her and it is hard to imagine that she is younger than I am. She loved my peonies, though I don't take any credit for them -- they've been in the yard for decades.

What impressed her most? The scent of the honeysuckle and wild purple phlox in the far back yard! It smelled like the hollow in Kentucky. And she liked my pansies.