My friends:

I sat on my porch this morning drinking coffee and reading the “News in Brief” from the NYT.  I glanced across the few feet of my porch and saw this tableau.  The glass jar came from my mother’s house.  Think of that:  My mother died in 1985, and I brought this jar from her fruit cellar, filled with bread-and-butter pickles made by her hands.  To its right in the little planter grows a volunteer.  It sprouted more than a year ago and I’ve nurtured it ever since then.  I have no idea what it is.  The other plants came from Soil Service.  They thrive here on my porch, lifting their leaves to the sun, drinking the water and Miracle-Gro with which I nourish them.  My hands let the tablet fall idle.  For a moment, I needed nothing more than the sight of these plants and the brave little cutting with its one tap root sprouting in my mother’s pickle jar.

It’s the twenty-seventh day of the thirtieth month of My Year Without Complaining.

Life continues.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BIG SISTER, ANN LUCILLE CORLEY FOX.