BRIGHTFACE AND FRIENDS

The trio of grandies Kaya, Miasa and Mitsuki arrived from across the Lake late yesterday afternoon in a big van full of themselves (driven by their lovely mother Kasumi) and amazed me with their growing and maturing-- living proof that miracles are perfectly natural.

They brought with them the usual bunch of puzzles that attend grandfathering a cluster of lightbeings, such as what to do first or is there a first-- but no problem in this case-- as always, I immediately took them out into the garden where they love to rummage (which they don't get to do in their pro tem city apartment), especially in summer when everything is green and the spicy air of late day is so rich with fragrances ("Let's walk up the road, too!" they yelled when we got outside).

Of course I right away had to show them the long green carpet of basil - they're basil fanatics - and over there was the opportunistic watermelon, growing meters and meters in length out of a seed left in the compost pile (on whose original bouncy heap of rustly autumn leaves the three girls had giggly danced just last autumn), they ooohd and aaaahd at the softball-sized green baby watermelon that looks so cute snuggling there in the grass where the vine climbs over the stacks of shiitake logs on its pale green way up into the cedars, then they sniffed the lemon verbena - there are ritual steps to the garden re-acclimation process - then into the garden proper with the towering tomatoes, green wall of goya and climbing green beans, gangly sunflowers, leftover turnips and amazing butternut squashes getting bigger and bigger but hiding under those huge leaves, the trio showing me where they've just gotten new mosquito bites, we picked some green beans, Morocco beans and tomatoes, checked out the goya flowers up close - the three LOVE goya!

Then they sniffed the ginger leaves, checked out the baby green peppers, which were "Cuuuuute!", tickled the tiny green feathers of the new carrots and got mad at the monkeys who stole the older carrots that they themselves could have picked right now; then we walked over and talked for a while with Brightface, the biggest Sunflower in the garden, who nodded to the girls and asked a few questions about being human and good and going to school, told them some nice stuff about being a flower and having fun even being so tall and thin and with no feet, here among all his vegetable friends, it was a grand life, following the sun. And it wasn't my hand moving the big blossom or my voice saying those words with a sunflowery accent. Pay no attention to that man beside the sunflower.

Didn't matter, the girls liked their conversation with Brightface. Lots of green and purple shiso frilling around too, they also love shiso. They love everything, I think. They squeally enjoyed diving into the high wide tomato bushes to get at the gemmy rednesses in there and putting them in the basket one by one with the bunch of beans, then we headed back up to the deck to plan the tent, which they'd been calling for all along but forgot as soon as there were snacks.

New minds move fast.