Gardener

Illuminated Manuscript OUR LORD REIGNS BANANAS--2LBS FOR 39 CENTS FLOWERS During a spring snowstorm I saw the brightly lit sign in front of a fruit market, but laughed it off. April snowstorms being conducive to cynicism. But a brief flurry of crocuses two weeks later chipped away at my doubt and then one day on the road to work I was nearly blinded by daffodil and forsythia shine. After that, doubt didn't stand a change. Petunias, tulips impatiens pattered down, catching in window boxes, along sidewalks. Rhododendrons thundered in lavender clouds, dandelions crackled in jagged lines across green lawns. Oh, yes! Our Lord reigns, rains flowers. Fruit showers, forecast for later in the summer, came as expected. Strawberries and raspberries gushed through gutters, a Red Sea miracle. Plums the size of golfballs pelted unprotected cars. Bananas whirling like boomerangs filled the air. Apples, peaches, pears came down like cats and dogs, all together, all singing a rainbow promise: Our L

As I write this, two men are in my kitchen, sanding and sawing and hammering. I know them slightly, they are good men, a father and son team that restores old floors. We discovered a fir floor underneath the linoleum of our kitchen, and we hired these men to take off the layer of gunk—linoleum adhesive, I suppose—and make the floor smooth. Some of the boards were damaged and there were other places where non-flooring boards had been inserted in a remodeling project of the past , so our workers had to replace some of these boards with fir, carefully fitting in the tongue and grooved old fir pieces they had found at a store in Paulina. The father of the team must be 75 years old but he crawls around the floor on his knees with no knee pads (his son uses them) and seems happy in his work. He saw my boat in the garage and commented on it, saying, he found no pleasure in fishing: “A half hour on the lake and I’m ready to come in.” His joy seems to be his work. His son, who knows I recently