Who Scouts Before Us

The other night, in my dream, I bumped into my maternal grandfather. He was smiling mischievously in his St. Patrick's Day banjo-playing outfit. We both knew he was a ghost, but it didn't matter. He had come to party. He tilted his hat to me, and then he was off.

My grandpa was a fantastic gardener. He sacrificed generous amounts of MiracleGro to the garden gods, but he also toiled and tended his plot carefully, and produced in turn a hearty amount of flowers, vegetables, and fruits. My aunt gave me a pile of his photographs recently, which are all filtered through summer evening light and motes of floating soil.



I love the one above especially, which seems tantalizingly quiet and slow, like a frame from a really patient film. Just watch the water track across the hot asphalt. You can hear the cicadas buzz. I can see my grandma sip her ice water on the screen porch. Summer! Summer comes toward us again.