Last spring, I brought a portable gardening kit created with the help of a wonderful sales clerk to my mother-in-law, Joanna MacLaughlin.  Together, we potted geraniums which then graced her window sill at The Sweet Life.

After Joanna passed, my father-in-law sent three of the containers from that little window sill garden home with me.  This weekend, my husband and  I made the annual Soil Service spring run. He got sod and feritilizer, and zinnias for the sunny edge of the driveway.  I got impatiens, geraniums and a few other annuals to scatter in clay pots on the porch and deck.

Pictured here is one of the clay pots that Joanna filled that day, working dark soil with her gloved hands and gently pouring water on the tender plants.  I thought about her as I potted this weekend, thought of the gleam in her eye when she saw the gardening kit that I wheeled into her room.  She touched the newly purchased gloves and said, “Are these for me?”  My heart soared then; and I knew I had done the right thing in bringing a sample of what she had so loved to do to the small room in which she spent the last months of her life.

I only knew Joanna for four years, but I carry a bit of her in me.  The smile with which she greeted everyone; her sweetness; her uncomplaining nature; these inspire me.  As does her love of gardening, in which my own mother, Lucy, also took pleasure.  I hope that I am, in some small way, their legacy — the legacy of two fabulous women, who worked the earth each year with such care, nurturing  new life, surrounding themselves and all of us with the beauty they created.