For you? If you were here right now? Purple and blue sweet peas.

Hard work is done, and I don’t mind telling you I’m writing you from my porch, gin and tonic half finished. It is spring here, although colder than it should be, and there are flowers everywhere I look. LB, I took your advice, and my California poppies are a solid wash of orange. The lemon geranium, which hosts the ladybugs, is going off, so the bees are here too. I never understood why the ladybugs lay their eggs on the geranium, so their little alligator babies are all over the plants when the roses twenty feet away are covered in aphids. I can solve that, though, and have spent more time gently transferring ladybug larva to my rose plants than reasonable people would. My quince is long past, but the tea trees are scarlet. Tea trees in the Bay Area flower more densely than the ones here, so that’s one thing in favor of Oakland. But here, people come out on their porches and stoops, where they can actually see the tea trees. They don’t do that in Oakland, that I’ve seen, and I don’t understand why. The houses are the same, so it isn’t that they have small, lame porches or a less inviting architecture. But here you naturally take your plates to the porch first thing, or drink on the steps ogling passersby. We reject the interior! Why, Bay Area people, do you huddle inside? Is it the extra ten degrees?

We’ve been bringing flowers inside, me and Ali. We must have eight or nine vases in the house. Roses in one room, honeysuckle in the bathroom and both bedrooms. She bought red daisies, and got another two bouquets for her birthday. It is her birthday today, and she is the best roommate I’ve ever had. I picked two gardenias from across the street (please don’t tell!) and a couple blue cornflowers and put them in her room to perfume her sleep. We probably won’t really run to SF, but if we make it to MurderBurger in Davis, we’ll call the whole thing a success and order milkshakes with our burgers and fries.

I once gave a gardenia to an old Japanese man. I worked in flower stores through high school and college. You may think I’m just a poser, with my "honeysuckle" and "cornflowers", but I was a professional, you know. I have useful skills, like arranging bouquets either by lying the stems horizontally, folding the tissue over them and tying the ribbon OR holding the stems vertically and rotating them to make a perfectly circular posy (secure with rubberband, cover band with ribbon). I can make bows, you know. Anyway, the owner of the flower stand in front of Cody’s used to keep a stock of broken stems to give to pretty girls. So I was working there and a wistful old man came by a couple times and lingered. I thought it was crap that only pretty girls got flowers, so I asked him if he wanted a flower and he asked for a gardenia. Which I gave him.

He came back the next day with a tin of stale cookies for me and tears in his eyes. He said the day before had been his anniversary and he always gave his deceased wife a gardenia and he put this one on her picture and it smelled good all night. I was so lucky. There isn’t always more symbolism, but that time I was so lucky.