spring? is that you?

Spring has been very slow in arriving this year. Not that i ever enjoy winter, but, when it drags on so long, & so bitterly, it leaves me... bitter. Thankfully, the days are consecutively above freezing now, & alive things are starting to appear. This afternoon, to celebrate, my boyfriend drove me out into the country so i could go to a nursery where my family has taken me to my entire life. For the most part, all nurseries & plant farms produce a similarly pleasant nostalgia, which tends to result in unnecessary hours (& dollars) spent maintaining this green bliss. However enjoyable a trip to a nursery is, no other place can compare to the utter nirvana represented by this plant farm. Two-hundred acres of farm: over a dozen greenhouses, sheep (another blissful childhood memory,) burros, cats... everything alive & happy & beautiful. Bliss.
Sadly, i did not inherit my mother's green thumb. I cannot grow things. At all. I'll admit that it's largely due to a complete lack of sunlight in our antique neighborhood, but even house plants are hit & miss for me. I don't always kill everything, don't get the wrong impression, but it takes a pretty tough plant to survive my lifestyle. The ones that do, last forever. Knowing this, i buy lots of plants, every year. Probably two-thirds of them die, so i like to keep my odds high by getting a large number of them.
To date, the only successful gardening venture at this house has been my spring bulbs. This is the second year for them to bloom, which is enormously rewarding, since i don't have to do a damned thing, & they'll always reappear. One afternoon of hard work, years of enjoyment. It does make me a little mournful when i consider the reality that, once i've left this house, & it is occupied by other, more careless tenets, the tulips & daffodils & muscari that i love so dearly, will be forgotten & trampled beneath cigarette butts & PBR cans. Consistently, i remind myself what an important lesson in zen living this is: Sometimes, after planting a garden, you will abandon it.