Admiring nature

I never was much of a gardener, and my contribution to nature is just to admire it. I do believe that there are two kinds of people in the world -- those who admire nature, and those who can do something about it. I am most definitely NOT one of the latter. But I think I can admire with the best of them.

Take, for example, my daughter and I. When she was very small, she always wanted seeds for her April birthday. Leonard sort of scooped out a spot in a place at the side of the house. She thought we should plant the seeds together, so we did.

I really thought I was keeping up with her, but her plants grew extremely well and my plants really struggled, even with my constant care. The one thing I did not do was get down on my hands and knees and breathe on the plants. You can't say I didn't try. The plants grew and bloomed, but my flowers looked sickly compared to the glossy blooms that appeared on Cheryl's flowers.

I gave it one more try when Leonard cleared a small patch in the backyard. This was supposed to be a plot of gardenias, which were my mother's favorite flowers. I was trying very hard to measure up to the rest of the young mothers in our subdivision who could do everything, it seemed. Certainly, to my eyes, they all seemed to excel at all the things I had not conquered.

During one beautiful spring Leonard cleared a spot in the reserved space in front of the porch. According to the instructions, it should be a very simple job.

So I dug up a spot, broke up the dirt clods and laid the tulip bulb in its waiting little hole. I watched that spot every day until I saw something appear. It was not yet a whole tulip, but it had promise.

Each morning was, of course, a little disappointment. I was not greatly disappointed, because I knew that it would not be like pieces of colorful flower material, instead of looking like little tulip bulbs, which was what I put in the ground.

So we shall see. Sure enough, blades of something green sprouted up in the flower garden. I was delighted after having so much trouble trying to successfully grow a plant.

The weather cooperated, and it wasn't long before the plant itself grew enough to produce a group of six tulip flowers. Each plant was a different bright color. As much as I wanted to show the tulips -- they were so lovely -- I thought it better to just let them grow.

And after giving the kids many instructions to not touch the flowers, I just enjoyed them.

The kids were the first to discover them, and they came running around the house when they discovered the blooming flowers. "Mom, mom!" they yelled. "Your tulips are blooming. There's six of them."

And each of the five kids present -- three of mine and two of the neighbors' -- came around the house, each one carrying a blooming tulip. At that instant, Bryan, age 2 1/2, came around the house with the last tulip in his hand, yelling, "Look, I got!"

There's nothing to add to that.