Dead Flowers and Strudel

This was a good day to break the record for flower-planting.  I mean really….who plants flowers OUTSIDE in DECEMBER, especially in a locale famous for SNOW this time of year?    

I’ll tell you. ME.

Warm-ish drizzles spit from low-hanging clouds as I pushed our oversized (broad, manly, too-big) wheelbarrow a quarter of a mile to my neighbor’s yard that just a few weeks ago resembled a show home for Better Homes and Gardens.

Jean (not her real name) was already in energetic gardener-mode, digging up droopy stalks that no longer bragged of summer lushness.  The green leaves and yellow-and-burgandy blossoms had gone lifeless, struck dead by multiple frosts.  “Hi!” I called, and rolled closer, my shovel rattling in the wheelbarrow. 

“Hey!  I wish I could remember which plants had double blossoms.  You liked those, didn’t you?” she asked.

“I like them ALL,” I answered.  “Really.  Everything in your yard is beautiful.” It was the truth.

She plopped generous root balls topped with browned leaves and bowed seed heads into the wheelbarrow, then motioned for me to follow.  “C’mon.  There’s more.”

I followed her around to the lake side of the house, navigating the mammoth wheelbarrow with its two front wheels (yes, TWO) between dead or dying plants, feeling somehow guilty, like I shouldn’t be tromping over beauty even when it rested.  “How about one of these?” she asked.  “And this?”  Wow.  I was expecting maybe three plants and already had twice that many.

Her eyes sparkled glittery, her smile breathed lovely, her generous gifts heaped lavish. With the floor of the monster wheelbarrow covered with dirt balls, I said good-bye, Merry Christmas, and thank-you…and THANK YOU AGAIN, so much.  We hugged in the mist with damp hair touching, and exclaimed about the marvelous, unseasonably warm day.  “I’m ready for spring,” she confessed with a look of gardener fever in her eye.

I pushed the adopted, uprooted orphans down the road on a field trip past neighborhood sights they would never see again, until we arrived at their new home.  In just a few minutes I’d dug holes and put them to bed for the winter with bare hands that pat-patted the soft earth gently into place.   Ahhhhh….therapy.  I love dirt. Wait…I AM dirt (Genesis 2:7).

Than after washing my encrusted hands, picking the black from beneath my nails, and tossing my shoes in the washing machine, I withdrew in stocking feet to my kitchen to bake a surprise thank-you for Jean and her husband: apple strudel.

Soon cinnamon and nutmeg wafted into every square inch of my house, the spicy scents made richer because of all that Amish butter, a half of a cup slathered between sixteen flaky pastry leaves.  As soon as the strudel came out of the oven, I delivered it to Jean’s house, still steaming, so she could enjoy the addictive aromatherapy as well.  Fresh-baked smells can be almost as enticing as fresh-baked bites.

I love bartering, both conceptually (the idea of not using money) and practically (finding ways to make it happen).  Helping each other.  Offering freely. Giving out of gratitude for what we have, and gratitude for the recipient.  Knowing whatever we share will be received as more than enough.

Dormant flowers traded for strudel.  A promise of beauty from one hand, and deliciousness from the other.  I like it.