Anemones

I fell in love with anemones today. The last load of laundry was being taken from the dryer when my husband mentioned a trip to Home Depot. With several days of rain in the forecast he had it in mind to buy lawn fertilizer and apply it. The yard will have a good watering and he wanted to be one step ahead of it.

I'm game for a trip anywhere at anytime. Home Depot constitutes a very small trip but here was a perfect break from the chores. There wasn't anything on my shopping list for Home Depot. That never stops me. You walk around, get ideas and generally wind up finding something you need anyway, only you've forgotten to write it down. My jacket was on even before Al got around to inquiring if I wanted to come along.

There have been enough trips to Home Depot to have very precise expectations of the visit. Casual outdoor furniture is set up in one area. Lumber can be found on the far side. There are aisles and aisles of funny-looking doo-hickeys I seldom walk down.

There's the carpet section, window treatment department, paint, kitchen center, bath, doors, windows, lighting, tools and cleansers. There are enough areas and products for me to circulate widely and come home with a dozen great plans for the house.

The strong wind hurried us through the doors. I felt blown in. I stopped inside as if arrived at the wrong address. My eyes filled on the glorious show in front of us.

Home Depot was turned into an arboretum. Large carts on wheels, arranged with Easter lilies, hydrangeas, every blooming beautiful flower possible, were lined up one after the other along the aisles.

Tier upon tier of flowers on carts wafted their humid green aromas through the store. Easter was in every breath you took. Spring is stumbling in getting established in the Midwest this year. But at Home Depot it's a flourishing certainty.

Chilly weather is making businesses that raise and sell tender plants extra solicitous over their care. Snowfall (as recently as yesterday), windy conditions and a lingering chill are adding a difficult twist to their operations.

Nurseries and places like Home Depot, whose seasonal shops are usually bustling with traffic at this time of year, have been forced to play nursemaids to plant inventories that wouldn't survive if left outside.

Home Depot has become a virtual greenhouse. Its big building, with acreage as big as a farm it can seem, is giving overnight protection to myriads of plants. It gives the store a fantastic new look. It does a great job of reminding customers that spring is really here.

Instead of studying paint chips, or checking out the Roman shades for windows I want to dress up, or scanning the cleanser aisle in an effort to kick-start my spring housecleaning I followed the flower carts like one enchanted. I went along as if turned out in the best formal gardens with nothing more to do than appreciate the spring blooms on display for the public to enjoy.

The anemones were on a cart in a far corner of the store. All open-flowered and showy they dazzled me right off. I turned back to look upon them some more.

You can't describe first love and that's what it was. Anemones swept me off my feet. They have a look of liveliness. They're made for dancing and singing and taking it all in.

That's my idea of a flower. A flower's function should be more than to stand tall and ornate or be cute and cozy next to the ground. My admiration is for flowers that look about and say "Hey, here I am. What's going on that I might be missing? " Anemones are what happiness looks like if described by an object of the natural world.

I could have passed up the trip to Home Depot. The rendezvous with the anemones might never have happened. A quite easy response could have been "I'll skip Home Depot." It wouldn't have seemed to matter one way or the other.

But I said yes and this brought me to the anemones. A garden full of anemones is now my summer wish.

Ro Giencke - April 2011