beginning and endings

While knowing that any day on this earth could be my last, I enter this spring season with a sense of possible loss. Just as my garden is maturing and filling in, I realize that we may move in a year and a half and this could be my last full year gardening here.

Like the pecan trees located in Central Texas river bottom land, I am prone to put my tap root down deep wherever I live. There are so many ifs in the air about all this that I won't stress about it, yet for the moment it looks like we might be leaving the Townlet sometime next year.

It's hard to leave a garden behind. The ones I have created in the past have continued on, some better than others. Gardens are both works of imagining and of problem-solving, based on sunlight, soil and water. And one walks away from them with the hope that they will continue to provide a conversation for the folks taking over, and with the hope that another patch of land will show up, waiting for building a new garden.

But I must admit that I would like to grow old with my garden and look forward to a time when I can.

Meanwhile, I will be thinking more about trees and shrubs this year. I'd like to add a few more redbuds and maybe some dogwoods. A few more viburnum. Flowering quince. Roses.