Stem, Bud, Leaf

I write about this hedge every year. It's a welcome subject today, when there are so many things I'd rather not write about. So many sad and unnatural things.

The hedge, on the other hand, spends its days just being a hedge. It was trimmed earlier in the season, so it has the sad openness of a little boy after his first haircut, curls heaped around the chair.

But the haircut has not deterred the hedge from performing its hedgely duty — the steady transformation from brown stem to pink bud to green leaf.

Some years it takes weeks for this to happen, and I hold my breath. But this year it took only a few days. An ordinary miracle.