The Coloring of June

The glare of the mid-morning sun on my snow-covered Iris bed left me with an empty but yellow shape floating before my eyes for too long but I had been unable to turn away from looking with a combination of forlornness and hope at the now-white spot that bursts with color in June.  Ah, June.  Would that it would arrive soon.  Then I would begin to savor the freshness of greens from the Common Ground Garden.

I turned from the brilliance of the window and picked up my coloring tool.  My new adult coloring book was full of lines waiting for me to fill with the various shades of green that would remind me that the whiteness surrounding me would soon enough be giving way to the welcome green and then the good colors of all the things I could eat each week as I was rewarded for my patience with the fruits of the labor of people young and agile enough to bend and kneel and pull and push the earth into all the right places to help the plants produce the sustenance that I longed for now.

My fingers moved my coloring markers with care so that I could stay precisely within the lines created for my entertainment.  I thought of the young workers hoeing the new straight lines that would be first green and then the colors of my favorite foods.  Color on, old fingers; dig on, young women with strong backs and eager hands, touching the earth and turning richly brown with the dirt of your labor and the color of joy for the good you provide to those of us past the age of gardening for ourselves.
Lois Head