The garden got tucked in today. Cut back the mint before it plots another invasion, pulled the spent beans, and packed straw around the rosemary with firm instructions to survive one more Vermont winter. It has heard this speech eleven times.
What I don't cut anymore: the coneflower and black-eyed Susan heads. The goldfinches need them more than I need tidy. Forty years ago I'd have had every stem down and bagged. Forty years ago I was in a hurry.
The johnny-jump-ups have seeded themselves into the cracks of the path again, right along the beds Walt built. I've stopped fighting them. Some blessings arrive where they please, and the best thing you can do is not step on them.
One acorn from under the old oak on the ridge, now in my coat pocket, holding my patience for me until spring. The oak dropped about four thousand of them. I don't think it'll miss one.
Pebbles that become a boulder
Many shrines in Japan keep a sazare-ishi, a big lump of rock made of small pebbles cemented together over ages. It's named for an old poem about little pebbles slowly growing into a great boulder, with moss covering it.
I'd never take a stone from shrine grounds; those belong where they are. But on my last visit home, at the river below my grandmother's village, she pointed at the water and told me to choose one. I picked a small grey pebble and wrapped it in washi.
It sits below my kamidana now. Some days it reminds me of patience. Some days it just reminds me of her hand, pointing at the river.