H is for Hydrangea

Okay, so maybe this no longer resembles a lush, pompon of a flower, but I couldn't resist taking this shot of the plant's skeletal remains before the gardener in the park where I was walking hacked them all down to make way for the much-anticipated arrival of the first spring blooms.  There's something that draws me to the stripped-bare beauty of leaves and twigs at the end of winter.  I think it is in part the textures, but it is also, I'm quite certain, the fact that these very twigs and leaves will soon be gone.  Sometimes the value of a thing or a person or a place grows greater to me when I realize how transient it is, how transient I am.  Ah, yes, mutability.  Percy Shelley and I would have been best friends.  Perhaps I should have named this post H is for Hurrah, as in the last one--at least until spring bursts on the scene.

I'm thinking tonight of what daylight will bring: the smell of cold mud and new moss, the taste of early morning tea and wheat toast with raspberry jam, and the feel of a pair of work gloves on hands that after a long winter have become too used to indoor pursuits.  There are gardens to clear at my mother's house, a fence to mend, and, yes, old hydrangeas to cut back.  Life itself right now is all about mending damage and pruning and preparing for a tomorrow that brings with it some things as expected and familiar as snowdrops and daffodils, but also, of course, surprises--some as welcome as a new plant volunteering itself in the garden, others as unwanted as a fence blowing down in a storm or a tree falling on the chicken coop (notice how much I want chickens; they peck their way into nearly every conversation and thought!).  I've got a good pair of pruning shears, a box full of tools, and my back is nearly mended from the tumble I took last fall.  I can pull on my wellies and tackle anything.  I'm ready.