Colors of spring, colors of life

This week I've wandered through three stores looking at pot plants, thinking I would put a planter box on the cement pad outside my side door -- that's the door I use these days, the one in Tim's office. There's a plastic chair and a garden statue of the child St. Francis (a Christmas gift) there now, but I'd like to replace them with something bright and cheerful, a planter box full of colorful spring, summer and fall blossoms. Colors Tim would like.

I asked Ora Lee one day what Tim's favorite colors were growing up. I always picked out colors of shirts for him according to my tastes, blue, red and white, or maroon mostly. But as I thought back to the clothes he owned when we first met, I thought he probably had preferred yellows, tans and greens. Sure enough, that's what she said. In fact, he owned a bright lemon yellow sports coat and a pair of grass green slacks one time. We finally gave them away several years ago because he'd outgrown them.

So I planned to look for bright yellow plants and a heavy (too heavy to steal) rectangular planter for them. I first went to Forest Lake Greenhouses and slowly walked around, admiring all the red begonias and pastel petunias. They had a few yellow chrysanthemum type flowers in small containers but nothing struck my fancy. Their only oblong planters were plastic and lightweight, too easy for someone to pick up and carry away. Most were round and most were plastic. I decided to keep looking.

Later in the afternoon I drove over to Lowe's, parked near the garden shop and perused their selections. Skimpy. They had less yellow offerings than Forest Lake. Yesterday I made my way out to the new Home Depot. The few other shoppers seemed just as disappointed as I was, frowning as they looked around. Aisles and aisles of sameness, shelves and shelves of more sameness. The only thing that drew my attention was outside, a display of two-toned yellow petunias, something I'd never seen before. If I had been able to find the planter I had in mind, I might have purchased some of those but their planters were plastic, too. Most were round, too.

Again I came home without a flower or a pot to put it in. As I pushed open the door and stepped into the house, I could clearly hear Tim speak to me.

"You're the one who's going to look at them," he said, "why don't you get a color you like? They have lots of those. And it doesn't matter if the pot is plastic or plaster, round or square, just get something you'll like seeing whenever you come and go. Since you use this door all the time now, you'll see it every day and you'll remember to water it."

He was reminding me of the plants I've put at that door in the past, how they usually died from lack of attention. Lack of water. He reminded me that he has plenty of other flowers to look at where he is; he won't care one way or the other whether the ones I put there to look at are yellow or zebra-striped.

Okay, since he put it like that, maybe I'll go back over to Forest Lake and take another look. I will ask somebody to help me pick a hardy outdoor plant that can survive through the summer.

One day this week I wondered what Tim was doing, and he said he was taking a few minutes to simply enjoy heaven's beautiful colors. I tried to imagine what that was like but it's impossible to do. We take colors for granted, shades of blues and greens in sky and ocean, reds and golds in trees and flowers. But in heaven there are colors we've never seen on earth!

For so many years Tim was blind. Now he can see colors! And far more colors than I see, some that don't even have names, nothing I can use to compare them to something I'm familiar with. What an interesting, exciting, wonderful way to spend a few minutes. I'll think about that when I go back to find a flower pot for the door.