Today is Earth Day.
There are many many, perhaps a hundred, yellow irises blooming in my front yard.
I planted them there 15 years ago after discovering their unblooming fronds peeking up all around in the woods behind my house. There had been a house here many years before, I know at least 60 years from the age of the glass soda bottles I have found buried in the ground.
I dug up the irises and put them in a sunny place and the next year, I had flourishing plants with yellow bearded blossoms. For the ancient Greeks, Iris was the goddess of the sky, the personification of the rainbow. She carried the caduceus, the emblem now of medicine.
I have never ceased to marvel at the astonishing renewal of life after such a long time.
There was a film in 1972 called" Silent Running" in which the future earth had become barren of flora and fauna and the only existing ecosystems were in pods attached to large space ships. The order had come down for an astronaut to destroy the existing plants.
Tonight on the Rail Trail there is to be a Silent Run in honor of those who suffered or died in the Boston Marathon, so this morning I silently walked the Rail Trail in my own memorial along with a woman with a tiny dog dressed in a red and white pinafore and a woman walking backwards who said, "It's easier on your knees and it makes you stronger."
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