pushing up daisies

It’s Tuesday after a three-day weekend.  Dark clouds moved in this afternoon, and thunder rumbled all afternoon.  Good.  The gloom suits my dismal mood today.  The weekend was mostly lovely, but returning to work was like a sucker punch.  Dear God, will I ever live long enough to climb out of this deep rut of monotony that is my job?

The weekend was three days of clear skies and sunshine – just as beautiful as it ever gets around here.  It felt like summer.  I should have cleaned house, but I did only the bare minimum of duties inside and did fun stuff outside.  Golf with Someone one afternoon, kayaking on Sunday, and planting some things….jack-in-the-pulpit, and trillium.  I doubt the jacks will survive; they are pretty finicky.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, the day we are supposed to remember our dead.  I tend to remember dead people regardless….it’s not really that a special day is needed to remind me to remember.  Anyway, I stopped by the cemetery in St Paul to put flowers on my grandparents’ grave.  I’m not sure I would have done that if my brother hadn’t asked if I was going.  Just by his asking, I started feeling guilty for not having planned to go.

At the cemetery, dozens of people were milling around the graves…it was crowded for a tiny cemetery in the middle of nowhere.  Most of the graves were all decked out with wreaths or big colorful arrangements of unreal-looking flowers.  Flags had been placed on the graves of all veterans.  I can’t bring myself to be too elaborate with grave decorations, so I created a simple bouquet of a few snapdragons and dogwood branches, and tied them up with a green bow.  Personally, I thought it looked prettier than the larger-than- life-sized neon purple and orange zebra-print silk lilies on one of the graves I walked by.  Perhaps the deceased person was someone who appreciated things like that...I can only imagine.  Flowers on graves are for the living.  I don’t think dead people care much what you put on their graves as long as you remember them.

   

The daisies are all in bloom this time of year.  They grace the roadsides and hayfields with their cheerful beauty.  Daisies are one of my most favorite flowers.  There are lots of fancy varieties of them, but the ones I love most are the simple ones that just grow wild in drifts wherever their seeds drop.  I drove several hours this weekend, which not only gave me ample opportunities to enjoy the daisies, but also to view roadkill.  Countless deer, dogs, raccoons, cats, rabbits, and squirrels lay among the daisies on the edges of the roads.  Road crews will eventually come along and clean up the remains, but it’s an ironic thing to see a dead creature laying in a patch of cheerful daisies.  It’s like an already-decorated above-ground grave.  If the last thing my eyes see when I die are daisies against a brilliant blue sky, that will be OK. 

come rest here