Spring Fever

I arrived on time yesterday at the very very busy dental office, for the pre appointment, for what I thought was going to be the glue on of a shiny metal temp crown, on my latest broken tooth.

I found a seat in the crowded wait room, next to an older woman deeply intent on a magazine laid out on her lap.  I picked one up too, off the coffee table, and began reading about black holes and how some matter, mainly electrons and neutrons, do sometimes escape black holes in jets that spout up into space.  Some, I read, contain such heavy matter (the neutrons) and energy, they can cause gas clouds to collapse, which then form planets.  I love reading about black holes.  I can't wait for the new series out on FOX about the universe narrated by an astro physicist.  I only heard about that show, coming up, yesterday.  It will be during prime time, too, on Sunday nights.

After I read the black hole article, she looked up and caught my eye.  I quickly commented, "Are you a gardener?"  The magazine she was reading was really a seed catalogue.

"I'd like to be," she said.  She confessed to an age of nearly 80 years.   She said she lived in a trailer park and wished to plant wild flowers, for color, in the areas where there might be dirt, and not the clay that coats this area and is so sticky and dense water runs off it like the soil is made of plastic.

She told me when she was in high school in Lebanon way way back in time, the school would take the seniors on a trip out into the hills where they could see the lines in the soil on the mountain, that showed how high the water once was, when this valley was a lake, long long ago and because this valley was once a lake, that's why its all lake bottom clay left beneath our feet now.

I said "Did you see it, the lines in the mountain?  How high up was it?"  "No," she said, her eyes growing distant, "I never went on that trip."  

I told her about the strawberries I had out front for three years and how I'd loved going out in the morning to pick some for breakfast.  She said "Yum, I can almost taste them."

She told me when she was a young girl, she and a friend decided to plant flowers all over town, just for the heck of it.  I'd had the same fantasy as a young girl and I still do.  I told her about the Corvallis woman whom I helped with cats, who wanted to do the same thing, with me--go out in early spring and plant them everywhere, along the roads, in the forests and fields, all over.  Color everywhere you turn!

Last year, I decided instead of flowers, I would carry catnip seed to plant wherever I could for the cats, feral and tame, alone maybe, abandoned maybe, hungry maybe, so at least they could take a break from the harshness and roll in catnip!   I almost told the old woman about my dream, to plant catnip everywhere.  I looked back at her.  She'd looked back down to her seed magazine, deep in spring fever gardening dreams and plans.   Her eyes were full of life and sparkle.

I didn't tell her, because her name was called then, and she vanished into the bowels of the clinic. 

I smiled later, picturing her and I, out there, along the rural roads, her with her flower seeds and me with catnip, laughing as we planted and the breeze came and carried our seeds off on the wind to be dropped later in places we could never imagine.