Like many things I love, I’ve come to them late in life, and yes, better later than never for sure. Maria has flowers in her blood, like so many creative and nurturing women. Flowers are a creative and spiritual thing for many and Maria has this sense in her head of where each flower might want to be, in relationship to the world and to one another. It often works this way with us, I will say “hey, let’s plant a bunch of gardens,” and she will roll her eye at first, another chore, something else to buy, something else to do.

And then her artistic soul will kick in, she will begin to see the colors, how they will look, how they will grow and I will see her at odd times, crawling around, weeding. Both of us are obsessives, we simply obsess on different things. Yesterday there was a gleam in her eye and she said she wanted to go to the Stannard’s greenhouse and get some flowers. I brought the camera and Red and she wandered the aisles, talking to herself, pictures in her head that I could not see. Then she came back and went whizzing around the gardens, planting some around the statue, some to fill out this spot, some to fill out another.

She was in her own space in that greenhouse, had no idea I was even there until she came  up to me with an armful of flowers whose names I do not know and will never remember. Creativity comes in all forms, and if I will never be a blood gardener, I sure love the colors and even more, I love watching the peace and gleam in Maria’s eyes when she put them in the ground.

You cannot be a gardener if you are not an artist of one kind or another.