Ten days ago I took a different walk home from work. I felt like a nostalgia visit to the 2012 site of the Orthodox church, at its rented room upstairs in the community building. I wanted a look at Mother N.’s old garden too. Back then, Mother had it planned out so that the plants stood in height order like children in a class picture. The tallest (giant sunflowers) were against the south wall. Next were tall hollyhocks. Then, the flowers bloomed in layers and stages, drawing the eye in and upwards, with different colors every season to give us something beautiful to see all year.

Well, I should have known better than to take that scenic detour. At the old site, nothing was in bloom. There was shrubbery and undergrowth crowding around the community building, but even in mid May there were no flowers. After a little hunting around I found just this brave little volunteer:

What can it be? My search terms didn’t turn up anything similar. It looks like a yellow version of Platycodon, or blue balloon flower.

Update: Just figured it out — it’s Lysimachia punctata, Large Yellow-Loosestrife. Live & Learn! -m

The overcast drizzly day got a warm ray of setting sun as I turned away for the walk home. And right there was a great field of dandelions, the biggest and healthiest that I’ve ever seen. This was no wan fading garden, but acres of edible greens knee high and thriving between the bus station, the bridge underpass, and the interstate highway — enough nourishing food for the whole summer! I sure was tempted to pick them. But I didn’t pick any dandelions, because the field is home base for men living in tents and in cars parked all around. That is why this photo is so narrow and cropped; it wouldn’t do, to bother the men by taking pictures of them or their setup. I photographed only a discreet little snippet aiming away from them, and then I hit the road.

If Mother were around, and just maybe she was, she would tease me and make fun about my looking for signs of life in an old garden left behind. Then she would have been delighted by Life being Life at its medicinal best right across the street. Yes, the visit to the old garden felt like a wee bit of a letdown. But that walk was just one of the rituals that we create, to fill in the empty space and make meaning out of losing someone dear.

As a consolation prize, at home I searched for and looked through a couple of views of the old church. Mother made every possible effort to deck that little upstairs sanctuary with flowers, often from her garden at home or the garden right outside. This first view is from a warm day, when the woodwork in candle light enhanced her peach-toned lilies.

The other view is a cold day, when the very last ray of sun shot in against a white chrysanthemum.

Mother’s church has moved away. Her garden is gone, and so is she. What comes next? It’s up to me to honor her by tending our own little patch outside with the neighbors, and by appreciating flowers all around us, wherever they grow and whatever they are.