Return of the Plants

Yesterday our plants left the basement. My work-table returned to its normal uses again and the big table stands empty too. The neon lights are out. I work down there, these days—ever since we converted my old upstairs office into an upstairs secondary reading-living room we call “Europe.” “I’ll be in Europe, for a while,” I say to Brigitte when I want to take some time to read. Down here, in the basement, Winter is filled with life—a great mass of our plants just sitting under bright lights and waiting, waiting with infinite patience for the day when, once again, they will see the sun again. That day came yesterday. Then we anxiously checked all evening because the Weather Service reported spot frost warning for our area. Our times are indeed bizarre. The official dictum is Global Warming, but for me these past two years or so, it has seemed like our area is feeling the onset of the Little Ice Age once again. Remember it? Surely you do: 1550 to 1850 A.D. This one has my initials too. Checking this morning, I’m happy to report, the plants had withstood the Little Ice Age, for the moment, and were singing (audibly for me) an Ode to the Sun.

That ode? Well, here's one, by Sonagolese, its closing verse:

We must perish, but you, by your wonderful powers,
Will rescue from darkness those bodies of ours,
And fashion them over to foliage and flowers.