Hello sunny skies and warmer weather! The dogwood and magnolia trees planted three summers ago are budding – a perfect sign for the season of renewal.
I’m eager to plant annuals and transplant some perennials. My peonies will burst soon and they’ll need more room. After hours of toiling with a spade, I’ll be lulled to rest on the back porch by the tinkling of the garden fountain and wind chimes.
I think of my mother while gardening. She said she felt closest to God when on her knees digging in soil. She nurtured hollyhocks, hens and chicks, begonias, impatiens, and more.
Mom appreciated nature’s beauty and hard work. Having grown up during the Depression, she was an industrious and focused woman who frequently told me to “be productive.”
In recognition of my mother and National Poetry Month, here’s a fitting piece by Edgar Guest.
Results and Roses
The man who wants a garden fair,
Or small or very big,
With flowers growing here and there,
Must bend his back and dig.
The things are mighty few on earth
That wishes can attain.
Whate’er we want of any worth
We’ve got to work to gain.
It matters not what goal you seek
Its secret here reposes:
You’ve got to dig from week to week
To get Results or Roses.
My mother gave my daughters The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis when they were in their early teen years. She sought to inspire them with beautiful words that would lift their spirit.
In recognition of National Poetry Month, I perused my mother’s 7th grade poetry book that she never returned to the nuns in 1943. She clearly loved the tattered brown volume filled with her notes and dog-eared pages.
Joyce Poggi Hager 