Our friend Lorlee lived on a family farm near us in Alexandria. She loves to garden. Now she lives in Dallas, so spring comes earlier. She must be restless right now.
There was a gardening website that had a contest for stories of 100 words --- Lorlee submitted the following two.
"I didn't win the garden book they were giving away," she shrugs. "Mine are more memory photos than stories. People keep telling me to write a book -- but all I have in me are 100 word snippets."
Dad
Dad almost skipped a once in a lifetime trip to Switzerland because it would interfere with the planting of his spring garden. In his farmer's soul, he knew that we are given a finite number of springs – and once a spring is gone, it and its potential can’t be reclaimed. And though, like those springs, he is gone, that wisdom and urgency live on in me. As the springs flit by, I do my best to make each one count. I do it for me – I do it in his memory. And in my mind’s eye, I see him smile.
Grandma Klimek
She unlaced her black heeled shoes, took them off and lined them up perfectly beside her bed. It was the kind of footwear worn by grandmothers in the 50’s and nuns when they still wore habits. She went out the side screen door – used only when the weather was finally warm, past the small coop with the mother duck and her babies, headed toward her garden with its abundant vegetables – and one riotous row of zinnias. The black soil was warm under her bunioned bare feet, the ropey, varicose veins evident below her dress and old fashioned apron. Women of that age and time never wore pants or garden clogs.
