Vegetation thrives in my yard, drinking the rain and stretching to the sky as the sun shimmers in golden waves through the air.  I walk from car to house amid the surprise lilies, blooming mint, and the hostas, breathing the fragrance of the herbs in their pots on the porch as i pass.

Each spring I start with a yard pruned by able hands.  Weeks later, it turns into a jungle.  I stand on the deck and pick the wilted flowers to make room for the buds about to burst into full bloom.  If I sit very still, the vines will creep from the yard and coil themselves around my legs.

This growth pleases me.  Like the wildness of my curls and the stubborn bent of my hands, the dandelions and clover follow their own natural form.  I make no effort to impose my preference other than spreading a little mulch laced with Miracle Gro and Preen.

As a child, my son told everyone that green was my favorite color though I actually preferred blue.  Now I think he might have been prescient.  The wide expanse of soft sky stretches beyond the verdant crowns of the neighborhood trees but I feel comfortable in my rocker surrounded by begonias, pansies, and jade.  I have no need to move.  I sit until the sun begins to set and the old dog barks for entry into the house.

It’s evening on the tenth day of the forty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

There Will Come Soft Rains, by Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.