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.
