My Mother's Day Gift

On May 10, Mexican Mother's Day, my adult daughter and I drove to Lowe's.  She smiled at me from the passenger seat, a funny switch from her permit driving days when she had seized every driving opportunity. We ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the succulents, the annuals, and  perennials. The labels on the pots confuse me. Perennial. Annual. Does an annual  flower come back every year or does a perennial come back every year? Don't both words come from "annus",  the Latin word for year? I know I come to Lowe's every year to replenish my flower bed. Am I an annual or a perennial? Everything has a label. Drought resistant. Hardy. Full sun. Yes, we live in North Texas.

Three bags of garden soil and $86 of bedding plants later we headed home to start my flower bed make-over. My work-out-3x-per-week daughter whipped the  dead grey soil up with the  live dark-chocolate soil.  The rusty rake and hoe had both misplaced their handles in the metal shed over the winter months so she stirred the soil like a pot of stew with her daddy's pointy shovel.

The petunias, marigolds, and daisies settled into their new dirty home, their roots slowly finding their way underground.  My nails manicured with dirt tips, my toes pedicured with a gritty, backyard, soil scrub. I welcomed my flowers to the flower bed that skirts my back porch.

A few days later on American Mother's Day, my starting-her-own-life-now daughter brought me a can of worms. "Happy Mother's Day," she beamed.  The tube-shaped segmented animals scientifically known as "lumbricus terrestris" saluted me from beneath the lid. I could only stand to watch them for a few seconds before my squeamish self took over.  Before I replaced the lid on the can, I whispered to my Mother's Day gift, "Eat, chew and poop dirt."