Evening Primrose (Proving My Mother Right)

When I first brought them from my mother's garden, they were limp, weedlike. She called them Evening Primrose. She said they would multiply, be lovely in the Spring. I was septical. I waited. Watched. By the end of March, their tall, spindly stalks grew hips. April wrapped the hips in pink skirts. Through the afternoons and into the moonlit evenings, the pink blossoms glow. Waiting at the base of each open blossom is another, still sleeping. It springs open the moment the current blossom wilts. The performance lasts for several weeks. Each fall I give many away. I repeat my mother's assuring speech as cynical eyes scrutinize those gaunt, bare stalks. To those who guard and weed them through the fall and winter, these early spring performers wait, once more to prove my mother right. (Excerpted from The Color of Grace:Thoughts from a Garden in a Dry Land)