My small charge brought her rain boots with her, per my request. A heavy rain fell last night. Humidity is sliding down the windowpanes and the morning grass is so wet it squishes.
I pull on my rain boots, the ones with unicorns that she and her sisters gave me for my birthday last year. She pulls on her Pepto Bismol pink boots and we head outside.
The young miss is interested in growing things. She keeps a small bouquet of fresh flowers on her desk at home every day.
You could easily miss the bouquet amid her many other treasures piled high—early-reader books, construction paper creations, small stuffed animals, shriveled markers without caps, scissors, old birthday cards and fossilized Halloween candy. But amid her carefully curated collection routinely stands a small Ball jar holding cosmos and zinnias. She and her momma plant them in galvanized tubs where they bloom and bloom ‘til frost.
You’re off to a good start in life when hand-picked bouquets are part of your everyday.
Today she is making rounds in our backyard.
First stop is the fairy garden, a bowl-shaped clay pot with white impatiens sheltering an aging miniature fairy with no nose and a clipped wing. She repositions the fairy closer to the miniature yellow duck in the miniature birdbath.
Satisfied, we move on to the herb bed. She eyes a big leafy green plant that routinely bullies the other herbs.
“Pinch off a leaf and bruise it,” I say. Her entire life she’s been told not to hit, kick or punch and now here’s Grandma telling her to bruise something.
“When you bruise a leaf, you gently rub it between your fingers so it will produce a smell,” I explain.
She rubs the green leaf with her chubby fingers and lifts the leaf to her nose.
“What does it smell like?”
“Lemon.”
“Correct. It’s lemon balm. What is it?”
“Lemon bomb.”
“No, lemon balm.”
“That’s what I said.”
Moving along, she pulls a chive in bloom, lifts it to her nose and sniffs.
“What does that smell like?”
“Onion.”
“Close enough,” I say.
She then breaks off a low-growing herb with tiny leaves shaped like mouse ears.
“That’s thyme,” I say. “Smell it.”
She’s not repulsed, but she’s not terribly impressed either. “I know how to spell that one,” she says. “T, I, M.”
“Well done!”
We move to oregano with even bigger mouse ear leaves. She bruises the leaves, sniffs, and shoots me a look that says, “Did you really think this one would be hard?”
“Spaghetti,” she deadpans.
I pinch off a leaf of sage for her. She sniffs it, says, “YUCK!” and tosses it.
Just like that – there goes Thanksgiving.
We cut a small bouquet for her to take home, adding stems of lavender and rosemary to the collection. Regrettably, we both forget about it when she leaves.
I do the only thing I should do, and the only thing I can do— set the bouquet on my very cluttered desk.