Ray and Maria Plant some Tulips
I watched Ray and Maria planting tulip bulbs around the gazebo Sunday morning. They didn�t know I was watching them from the upstairs bathroom window or how the sight of them together filled my heart.
Sunday morning arrived cold, gray and rainy, but with the gift of an extra hour. I thought it was perfect �stay under the blankets and sleep another hour� weather, but Ray announced he wanted to spend his extra hour planting his tulip bulbs.
Cough, cold, asthma, pneumonia and RSV season is coming, if its not already here. When you live with a pediatrician, you don�t have the �holiday season�, you have the less festive respiratory illness season. Wheezles and sneezles keep him busy. I miss Ray in the wintertime. He�s here, but he�s not, if you know what I mean
I am watching from the window as they work together. Ray digs the hole. Maria sprinkles in a spoonful of bone meal and then carefully drops in the bulb. Ray covers the bulb with dirt then lovingly pats it down, tucking the tulip into it�s bed for the winter.
I can�t hear their conversation but I like to think that they are discussing how pretty the flowers will be in the spring, or perhaps he is passing along some Lakota bit of wisdom about the cycle of the changing seasons and the circle of life. Or they could be discussing Sponge Bob and getting Happy Meals for lunch. I�ll never know. This is their time.
The days grow shorter, although not this 25 hr day. Planting tulips on a rainy October morning is an act of faith and a prayer. Faith that the spring will follow winter, no matter how hard it will be. It's a prayer that spring will find the family still together in this home. Each homely little tulip bulb is an affirmation of life
You should plant some today
