Spring must be near since The New Yorker ran its Eustace Tilley cover. You would recognize it, I am sure.

A man dressed in a Victorian silk hat and a high white collar gazes at a butterfly through his eyeglass.

If a butterfly is present then spring is on the wing.

I have seen no butterflies lately, but a few snowflakes, and the results of many icy days.

One cold day recently, I visited my friend Megan in her new home. The house is wonderful but the garden will be delicious.

(She has proven her gardening ability at her previous home on Wood Avenue, where the garden burst in blooms over the sidewalk and onto the parking strip.)

We stood at her French doors and gazed at her yard as she talked.

“We are going to have vegetables over there,” she gestured to the right side of her garden.

They had moved into the remodeled house last summer.

Clumps of different sized and shaped plants dotted the beds alongside the paths and wall, and, in the near distance, what appeared to be something that would eventually droop with blossoms or perhaps a grape.

I know that the following is merely projection, but I imagined all those clumps and dry stems yelling, “Just give us a chance, Megan, and we won’t disappoint you!”

Megan has rapport with her plants.

Grand-mother had rapport with her plants, and I suspect she taught me that plants are eager to perform if only you will encourage them.

She would stand at the edge of her rows and I’m sure all stems straightened, blossoms turned to her for approbation, carrots leafed, spinach waved and tomatoes blushed with pride.

I must have misunderstood her message, thinking of permissiveness rather than discipline.

I gave the go-ahead to many invasive weeds that had no permission to spread and multiply.

They just spread and multiplied.

I had rapport with weeds when I had a garden.

One might say I had a showplace of weeds.

That’s in another life, for in this new life I live in my condo, where, so far, my rapport with weeds has ceased.

Gardeners come regularly, mulch, and discard errant invaders.

There are many, including: aggressive yellow flowers, clumps of white blossoms and those pesky horsetails.

Gardening is just the way I like it now.

I stroll guilt-free along the paths, pass the faux stream and real waterfall.

I watch lilies, roses and rhododendrons take their sweet time leafing out and, in the future, bloom their little heads off.

I sigh with contentment and recall with some pain the springtime chores – mulching being the most difficult.

I next think of summer when weeding replaced mulching as most difficult.

Next, fall. Oh, fall! How I loved fall when it was downhill gardening all the way.

I could say, “You should have seen it in July. It’s past its prime,” as if I once had a garden at its peak, a garden past its prime.

That is, if I ever I had a prime of a peak.

Back to Megan and her garden. I am assured that once those clumps get going her garden will be prime and will have a peak.

Her flowers will never droop.

Her insects will be beneficial. No root weevil will ever invade her cabbage plants.

No mildew will ever find her phlox.

All of the above were in my grandmother’s garden.

Of course, she had Spiritual Optimism, which means that weevils and erroneous thoughts never entered.

Growth is unhampered at my condo by pests.

I must have forgotten to leave a forwarding address to aphids, weevils and mildew when I moved.

You have to be careful about pests; they can recognize a vulnerable victim by feel or by house number.