I Spy With My Little Eye...

I celebrated a birthday this week. JB told me a week ago to leave all day and night Monday open. I knew that meant she made special plans. She scattered mysterious envelopes around the house and one by one I discovered we would walk out the door and not return for a fun filled twelve hours. This was an absolute act of love and I knew it.

On this day I was also given gifts in plain sight. All I had to do was look:

Last weekend Mr. Ryan saw an audio greeting card at the grocery store and wanted it badly. There were four superheroes inside, each mumbling a happy birthday in some macho way. I told Ryan I would buy him this card for my birthday.

"No Gram! I don't get a present for YOUR birthday!"

"Yes you do, Ryan. I'm sending you this card for my birthday."

When the card was ready to mail, I told him it would arrive in a yellow envelope. He was so excited he asked his Mother if he could wear a matching yellow shirt when it arrived.

I sent his brother Drew a card too: monkeys who turn into kittens and meow the entire verse of 'happy birthday to you". I have decided from now on I am going to give the boys a present every year for my birthday.

Made by my Grandfather. I can feel his energy in the cement.

I planted this climbing hydrangea two years ago and it has rewarded me with wide spreading vines and delicate pink flowers. I find this amazing.

When I die, I'd like to be remembered with pink zinnias. They are my favorite of all flowers. Lately my dog Stella tries to eat them and I knock knock on the kitchen window shooing her away. I consider myself the temporary guardian of the zinnia patch.


It was a mess of weeds and now it is a neat space of orderly mulch. With an obvious exception, this is the area in the back of my house that I use as a holding area for plants I don't know what to do with yet. I live in a valley and my yard is one third of what used to be a working farm. The soil is unbelievably rich. Things GROW here, even me.

One lonely tomato from the garden for my birthday. I just said things grow but not my tomatoes this year. I can't say why, but it might be the lack of attention while I have been gallivanting in Provincetown. In any case, eating this tomato, salted, was.....orgasmic :^)

And finally, every year I get a sign from my Father. He died twelve years ago but he never fails to assure a flower or plant growing where there should not be one. This year, on my birthday, he sent a chipmunk. We share the yard with a very active family of chipmunks. They scurry from one place to another all day. One day I came home to find one on the kitchen steps holding a cherry tomato with both paws and chomping away. It was a sight that will make me smile always. But this year a chipmunk appeared at the kitchen window and turned straight to me when I appeared. Eye to eye. For a long time.

And then, when I went outside, there he/she was again, greeting me again, staring head on for as long as I stared back. Not a usual occurrence by any means, and I actually think related to my Dad's way of wishing me a good day.

I had a good birthday. I am very thankful, very grateful, very hopeful.

The world is a mess, that's for sure. But I have a small world too, and this week it offered me its very best.

love

kj