Hope In Green Form

Ms. Dickinson may think that hope is a thing with feathers but, in my book, it's a thing with tiny green shoots.

I'm pretty sure that verdant little tuft is a potato sprout, born from the spuds I left unharvested in my pot last fall. Wouldn't that be a kick?

The other green (lower right) is oxalis, which isn't bad in salads in small doses. Tangy to the max.

There's also a handsome green trailing of purslane* in the same pot, also destined for the salad bowl, one of these days.

And miner's lettuce growing along the roadsides in the shady spots.

They all are hope to me, for warmer days and homegrown dinners, fresh from the dark dirt of my diminutive garden.

*When I went back to verify the name of one of the plants above in the post I had written years ago about my botany teacher, Dr. Jean Bobear, I found in the zingers some comments from her family, written months and months after, telling me that she had passed away and that they had found my words extremely comforting.

I can't tell you how wondrous I find that - that she touched my life through her words and, magically, I touched her family's through mine.