Two Roads Diverged

It was the weekend, and the canna lilies in the front garden look like so many frost-bitten cornstalks right now. Saturday morning the temperature was a balmy 60 degrees, and the sun was shining. It would have been the perfect time to clean out these flower beds and pull up the quilts for winter.

But that same morning a group of women more or less my age gathered with needles and scissors and colorful threads to learn a centuries-old needlework technique.

I wanted to be there.

Sunday afternoon the plants in my garden that had been gorgeous during the hot, rainless summer had both frozen and drowned and looked terrible. It was another beautiful day, and I probably should have spent the afternoon tidying up and putting away.

But on Sunday afternoon Boy#3 and 300 or so of his closest friends proved that when it comes to marching band music even four overtimes isn't enough, and they played a concert for family and friends.

I wanted to be there.

This morning I walked past the cornstalk cannas and the bedraggled begonias and thought of how anyone else passing our house must have thought I wasted a weekend.

And in my flowerbed I saw this:

and this:

and I completely forgot to look at the cannas and begonias.

A wasted weekend? It was not.