and so it goes

The cold earth penetrated my blue jeans as I knelt in the flower bed pulling up the last of summer.  The bright blooms amid the dying foliage caused waves of hot guilt to flow through me.  It was as if someone had forgotten to tell them it's time to surrender to the hard freeze of fall.  I stuffed them deeper into the gaping mouth of the hungry black can as I made room for their struggling counterparts.  I thought about the hard work of fall clean-up, of the countless hours spent disposing of the fruits of summer and how it doesn't really matter in the end - as spring would still find me asking why I hadn't done more.  My clippers found the daylilies and cut into the last of its warm, butter yellow blooms.  The hostas lay limp, too tired to put up a fight as I tugged at their leaves. One season ebbs and another begins to flow.

I think of my children - how they're each moving into a new season themselves.  One of increased height and confidence and independence.  Equal to the determination of Mother Nature there is no stopping their march into impending adulthood.  How silly of me to hope they would stay young forever.  It's akin to me hoping summer will never end

 yet it always does.