Five o’clock on Saturday morning finds me bargaining with myself.  I suggest that I try to sleep another hour and promise to make a fried egg if I do. By five-thirty, I’m in the kitchen warming yesterday’s coffee and opening a yogurt container.

I’m due to start gardening with Brenda at ten.  I’ve read the paper, blogged, answered e-mail, and done fifteen minutes of stretches by 7:30 but convince myself that no decent friend calls someone that early on a Saturday.  I put a load of clothes in the washer and strip the bed.  Little chores occupy me until 8:06, when I decide that Brenda must be awake, and call.  We arrange for her to walk the three blocks between her house and mine at the appointed hour.  Weeding first; then my annual visit to Soil Service on Troost for porch-plants.

Plenty of chores can fill two hours, and I tackle several of them.  I feel the lure of spring.  I walk down to the curb, snag the empty recycle bin and return it to the porch.  While outside, I move the shelves around, noticing the sagging rattan on one, the rust on another.  They’ll last one more year, I decide.  But the cushions which I didn’t store over the winter will have to be replaced.

At 9:45, I start a fresh pot of coffee and when it’s done, I take a mug to the porch to watch for Brenda.  During the five minutes of idle, I wave to three dog-walkers whom I don’t recognize.  Their pleasant smiles warm my heart:  Spring in Brookside brings out new neighbors and reminds me that I’m one of the old-timers now.

Then I spy Brenda, walking the first leg of her daily trip to work, a path which brought us into each other’s orbit last year for the first time, though she’d been making it for the seven or eight years since she bought her house on Holmes Street.  I pour her coffee, and we settle in porch rockers to plan our day.  My soul quiets; planting, talking, the glow of a clear spring morning — these things please me.

By noon, my side yard has emerged from beneath a tangle of weeds and brush.  We stretch our tired muscles and get into my Prius to drive to Panera’s for lunch, and then to Soil Service.  Brenda disavows the intention to buy anything but an hour later, my trunk holds a flat of ground cover destined for her back yard along with my porch plants and a dozen perennials for a long bare stretch under my deck which gets the full summer sun.

By three, I’ve taken Brenda home, seen her patio and wide back yard, brought us both to hysteria with the story of getting Chinese food while my mother lay near death, and rounded out my spring into spring with an hour of solitary gardening.  My porch and deck have begun to cast off their barren, winter guise.  I knew that I would ache come morning, whether or not I slept.  But the day’s effort rewards me with the glow which only gardening and friendship can engender.

A fair return, and well worth the agony that I feel this morning, on rising, with my muscles screaming to protest my abuse of them.  I don’t mind.  It’s all good.  I’m not complaining.