Lavender Roots

I cut the Lavender from our herb mound just before the first frost of the fall.  A few sprigs have been on the windowsill in Jon’s study, in the old glass inkwell, that he found at Old Bedlam Farm.

Somehow, every time I watered the Lavender I never saw the roots, until this weekend.

One sprig looked like it was drying rather than rooting.  I put that one in the bathroom with the other dried winter flowers that I picked in the pasture.

I stuck the Lavender growing roots in an old glass bottle and put it on the kitchen window where I can watch it more closely.

Seeing the roots makes me thing of spring.

Of the tips of plants breaking through the soil, of the annual flower sale at Hubbard Hall where people dig up their too plentiful perennials and sell them in plastic bags and cardboard boxes to benefit the old opera house.

When I look at the roots, I  smell the damp spring soil, and feel the decaying leaves trapped in the dry stems of the perennials I didn’t cut down last fall.

I remember gardening without the heat, without the mosquitos and black flies.  I can see the dirt filling the cracks in my fingers, feel it under my nails, my knees damp from kneeling.

I can see me, squatting in front of the herb mound, gently pulling the Lavender from the old bottle so the roots stay intact, and planting it next to the Lavender that I cut it from last fall.