To years ago, I celebrated Earth Day buying a Lilac tree from a yard sale, and planting it in my very bare front yard.
This year, the base is age appropriate, but the buds – ohhh the buds – are ripe and teasingly large.
The seller, a woman (now my friend) who generously thins her gardens and sells (for pennies) to frugal gardeners (like me), spent the time to tell me where to place my new “stick”: how to amend the soil, how deep to plant, and how much water it would take for my new acquisition to establish and move from potential to tree. Even though it was a thinning (to some, a throw away) from her garden, she wanted to make sure I had the knowledge to plant successfully. It was actually more of an adoption than a sale.
As I use my Patriots’ Day holiday for yard work, I’m reminded that everything I plant is a nod to potential and hope. Perhaps if we decided to treat our yards, our neighborhoods, or towns, our states, our country, and our world as a young dependent, we’d be more gentle, more kind, more attentive and more respectful.
Countdown to Earth Day 2010!
