A Happy Project

Max is moving to the city.... eventually. There’s a lot of steps between here and there. One of those steps is getting her house ready for renting, part of which involved pulling up the giant garden her ex planted to make the house more accessible. She’d mentioned the task during the winter, alluded that it would be good closure for her. She’d been putting it off, maybe because the symbolism of letting her ex take over her yard and her life was too heavy. I offered to help, “Nah,” she said, “Thanks though, I gotta learn my lesson.”

When the thaw came she dug out the tulips with her bare hands, scooping them up around the bulb and putting them in pots to deliver to me. “For my Dutch girl,” she said. They bloomed on my porch.

This week when she came to the city for work she delivered her pick-up truck full of hostas, iris, lilies and coneflower. The kids and the Mister and I all helped her unload. I invited my neighbours to come and take plants, the older ladies giggling that this was almost like shopping, something the pandemic has interfered with. Everyone stood 6 feet away on my driveway smiling in the sun. The plants nobody wants will be added to our community garden project. I like how she took a miserable task and turned it into so much warmth and goodness.

All of the tulips in my garden are purple and orange, I like it that way. The tulips she brought me bloomed orange too. A nice surprise. But this week the last one bloomed, it was bright yellow. And beautiful. I’m going to have to break my colour scheme and plant this anomaly in my garden with the rest. And every year when that one yellow tulip blooms I’ll remember where it came from. I like that. She likes it too. “Next year I’ll send you a picture one spring morning of it just starting to bud, all proud and sunny,” I’m smiling as I type the words. Her reply comes quickly, “And the year after that too.”

💐⚡️💛