Taking time out with a friend…
I spent the morning visiting with our neighbor Hattie Stone today. Hattie turned 94 this past St. Patrick’s Day. She is a long time meditator, avid gardener, knower of wildflowers and a monster Scrabble player. I treasure my visits with her on Mondays. Today we went out to the garden to see who might be coming up in the early days of our mountain springtime. The excitement that we share about finding a sprout of a peony, or the tips of a lily are fed by the sudden appearance of brilliant yellow tulips. Today I took over three chubby pink hyacinths that are coming on strong in our garden. She insisted that I get four shovel fulls of Purple Penstemon from her “maternity ward.” The maternity ward is a 25 foot square area filled with baby penstemon that make a thick carpet of dark green foliage under the Pinon trees. In about a month there will be tall spires of purple fluted flowers all over her backyard.
I came home from the visit, windblown, a little sunburned and filled up with joy from having had the time today to putter around with my friend in her garden. She was wearing her favorite baseball cap… an Art of the Song hat that she claimed as her own right off my head one day. She complimented me on it, and inquired what color it was… “why, Stone,” I told her. And that was that Hattie Stone now wears the prototype of the stone colored Art of the Song hats. It is only fitting! They both are one of a kind.