This is the month of life after death, when cherry trees bloom, mockingbird chicks chirrup, and a milky slug, with too many feet, meets the sun for the first time as I lift a flower pot to ready it for spring planting. My 6th-floor terrace garden is a curated scene of life and death and mysterious conditions in between—annual flowers, perennial bushes, and trees in various plastic, resin, cedar, faux stone, or red clay containers filled with potting mix procured from big box stores.
Today, windswept mounds of decaying leaves from the Japanese maple, which years ago I gave my husband for his birthday, are crumbling into humus between the concrete pavers and the brick of the outside wall. Against the gray metal fence that separates our space from the neighbors’, there is a small stand of four arborvitae trees whose filigreed leaves are greener this year after bearing the white weight and absorbing the melt of record-breaking snow. Next to them, the knock-out roses are thorny leaf-bare stalks, pruned too late, perhaps, to bloom this year or ever.
Nearby, beet colored leaves of the heuchera plants open like scalloped hands eager to grab the sun, and the grass green fractal starbursts of the tiger lilies seem to have multiplied exponentially overnight. They will produce grooved cylindrical buds that become silky, garish, pumpkin colored blossoms which after a gala appearance, will last only a few days. The hostas unfurl big-hearted leaves next to a felt container of strawberries, now tight stamen-studded yellow buttons, ringed by snowy petals—what a miracle that they will grow juicy and red in June! Even the straggly sedum burned scarlet from the cold and given up for dead is becoming plump and green again. The lilac bush with its pendulous clusters of cruciform blooms bursts with a scent that smells like heaven, if one believes in that possibility of eternal life.
I spot a bumblebee big as my thumb, fat, drunk, and promiscuous, sallying in and out of the rhododendron bush. Its vibrating wings are a frenetic testament to what it takes to stay alive. When it lands, its black mandible arms clutch a frilly pink blossom, and its invisible tongue sinks deep into the center.
These are some of the artifacts and portraits of spring in my garden. All of them are empirical evidence that life cycles continue. Each of them will give meaning and purpose to the coming days that will find me outside digging, planting, watering, weeding, pruning, sweeping, and turning the compost in a big black drum. I will be wearing a straw hat, sunglasses, and long-sleeved cotton and suede gardening gloves with a flower print, a cherished birthday gift from my late son, who won’t be celebrating any more birthdays. None of this is proof beyond myth or metaphor that human life continues after death, but spring presses on.
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