Blooming

Today we went for a walk. We managed to get out of the house early enough that we weren’t stewing in the humid early-summer heat. It felt good to get moving.

Of course, every walk with Miss Pink is a nature walk. Along the way she collects flowers and other natural objects (I won’t let her bring home trash, and now she ignores it.) Today she collected a ton of “wildflowers” (i.e. weeds), a “sparkly” white rock, a battered pinecone, various leaves, and some little mushrooms. Don’t worry, we didn’t eat them. As a result, a thirty-minute walk with her involves about half that time of actual walking. The rest of the time I am waiting for her to pick dandelions, which she calls sunflowers. It must be no accident that her name means “blooming.”

During the walk she said with deep satisfaction, “The world is a garden.” For her, it probably will be. She already shows more aptitude at growing things than I do. Which, let’s face it, doesn’t take much—because I’ve killed every plant I’ve ever been given. I say “given” because I’ve never bought one for myself. I couldn’t knowingly subject a poor innocent plant to certain death. But people (mostly my mother) have at various times given me living plants and told me how easy they were to keep alive—and I killed them. So Miss Pink doesn’t have a high standard to beat in the horticulture department. On the other hand, I won’t be helpful, either. Still, she spends time with my mom, where we are gradually convincing her that she can’t pick all the flowers at one time, that she needs to save some for later.

Her class at school decorated flower pots for their mothers and gave us flower seeds to plant in them. Miss Pink decided the flower was a gift for her, so I helped her plant the seeds and she toted the pot outside. I haven’t had to remind her to water it one day, and all the seeds have sprouted. If I were in charge of it, it would probably already be dead. I’m looking forward to seeing it bloom. Just like my little girl.