Walnut Street

Bon Champs

Bon Champs

I PUSHED HARRIETT-THE-Cat away from my fresh acrylic painting, answered my youngest teen on the cell phone, and otherwise declined the breakfast offer of my oldest child, the one who usually spews “what-do-you-mean-I-have-to-clean-the-frying-pan-before-I-leave-for-school-I-offered-to-make-you-eggs-didn't-I.” Fortunately, I have nearly enough adolescents in my life. Young adults, though, I still borrow; having once been a college professor, I miss those emerging adult-types. All things being unequal, my deficit of both kinds of young people provides me with garden time.

Most mornings, when I hear the lamb’s ears and cockscomb noise the sunrise, I’m too busy to participate in that cacophony. Sure, the porcupine agave growing in a pot, on my kitchen sill, sniggers as I pour coffee, and the spider plant that hatched babies above my staircase glares at me when I tumble from my bedroom. Yet, those indoor denizens lack the verve of my raised beds’ barnyard.

Tomorrow will be different. I will cup the morning dew alongside of my leopard plant and will dance among the stems of my toad lilies. If I set my alarm for five, or, maybe, even for four, I’ll be able to witness the stars fizzling from the dawn sky and, perhaps, witness an actual fairy, or two, wink into oblivion.

I’ll allow no teenage trauma, short of insufficient lunch meat in the fridge, to call me back over the threshold, to my domicile’s pandemonium. As long as our pretend lizard remains asleep, on one of his young masters’ beds, I’ll be able to skip among my alligator coleus and to twirl past my narwhal plants.

Of course, it’s likely that one of my princesses will have to borrow my mascara or a pair of my pantyhose and that said daughter won’t dare to do so without my “supervising” her attack on my bureau drawers. Similarly, I might have to give one of my princes, the one who sometimes oversleeps, a ride to school. For today, though, I will dream of frolicking among ferns and fauna.