A Gardener in February Thinks About June

[Gita]

I want to be that daring gardener who ploughs up her front yard -- to the horror of the Neighborhood Association -- and plants Birds of Paradise, waist high.

I want the confusion of their orange and purple plumage to lure the staid widow woman across the street from her manicured veranda. She will enter my jungle yard, throw up her skirt and dance like a cossack’s bride.

I want musicians to gather on my porch in late afternoon, get drunk on the perfume of four o’clocks, and play their revolutionary love songs into the night.

I want my neighbors to abandon their mowers and bland green lawns and plant old strains of corn and persimmon trees and share their harvests as freely as they now share scowls and prohibitions.

When autumn comes, I want to walk among my Birds of Paradise, push their firm stalks aside, and find the widow lying with the banjo player, their bodies tightly curled like roots of passion flowers.

http://www.google.com/search?q=birds+of+paradise+flower&hl=en&a...

[Dorothy Pendleton]

Yes, Gita, I'm with Cita.  Without trying very hard, I can hear an entire novel generating up out of your garden like a dust devil.  Dancing like a cossack's bride.  you are inspired.

[Deborah Jovan Reed]

i shared this with john and he laughed and i read him my comment and he laughed harder he said, "well, in your part of the deep south the term might be derogatory but in the boonies where i am it is used... then he gave me the history of the term, 'widow woman'... this 6S has taught me so much. thanks again.

[Crista Ramone]

A hippie's dream!

[Harry]

LOVE this!

[Cita]

Brilliant writing.  I can't wait for a whole book of Gita Smith writing that sings like this one does.

[Gita]

@Joey: We don't really have a bossy neighborhood association, not like that. Fiction.

@Deborah: Thanks. Down here people don't just say "widow," they tend to say "widow woman."  I noticed that when I moved to the deep South.

[Bill Floyd]

Man, I love this one.  It suggests a generous heart.  The final image couldn't be more perfect.  

Everyone hates their HOA.  So they run for a spot on the HOA.  Then everyone hates them.  Politics, yo.

[Deborah Jovan Reed]

I wiki-ed Birds of Paradise as soon as I read the first sentence. I never knew they were flowers as well. And lovely ones at that. Especially enjoyed the imagery of the flowers reviving the real nature of that woman.

[Joey Delgado]

I love the sensuality of the last sentence and the brassy way you defy your home owners association. It reminds me of my mother's rants about how HOAs are from the devil. She'd say, "If I wanna paint my door red, then damn it, I'm gonna paint it red."

Gita, this a definitely firing on all cylinders piece. It's so fast and honest and whimsical. I just loved it. 

[Sandra Davies]

Gorgeous, and as typical a paean to your mind and imagination as any I've read (and I'm definitely NOT a gardener)