It’s important to remind myself why I’m buying flowers every week.

This week I got sunflowers and asters and alstroemeria – with some wild phlox tangled in, cut from the embankment behind my building.  I had some dear people in mind when I picked out those flowers – and filled the blue canning jar, and the white pitcher with something I imagine they would like.  It was wonderful to gather all the shapes together – the wild phlox pointing every which way between the tiny purple daisies and the juicy big sunflowers.  Handfuls of late summer prairie on a rainy May morning.  The radiant nacho-orange of the sunflowers makes the other petals glow – perking up their reddish-purple like a blazing sunset.  Deep yellow is friends with almost every other color.

As it turned out, though, I had more than enough to see with this lovely creature, purloined from a spirea that rambles along the edge of public park, behind a neighbor’s overgrown back-forty.

Yes. I went on my walk this morning with a cup of water in one hand and garden snips in my pocket, wearing my highly conspicuous, floppy orange hat.  It was raining when I went.  It’s about a 10 minute walk to the park.  I really wanted some spirea.

On the way home, I lost the spring that opens and closes my Dollar Store garden snips.  I paid the price.  Totally worth it.