I was especially interested in flowers that year because I was planning to landscape my own yard and I was eager to get Grandpa's advice. I thought I knew pretty much what I wanted -- a yard full of bushes and plants that would bloom from May till November.

It was right after the first rush of purple violets in the lawns and the sudden blaze of forsythia that spring that Grandpa had a stroke. It left him without speech and with no movement on his left side. The whole family rallied to Grandpa. We all spent many hours by his side. Some days his eyes were eloquent -- laughing at our reported mishaps, listening alertly, revealing painful awareness of his inability to care for himself. There were days, too, when he slept most of the time, overcome with the weight of his approaching death.

As the months passed, I watched the growing earth with Grandpa's eyes. Each time I was with him, I gave him a garden report. He listened, gripping my hand with the sure strength and calm he had always had. But he could not answer my questions. The new flowers would blaze, peak, fade, and die before I knew their names.

Grandpa's illness held him through the spring and on, week by week, through summer. I began spending hours at the local nursery, studying and choosing seeds and plants. It gave me special joy to buy plants I had seen in Grandpa's garden and give them humble starts in my own garden. I discovered Sweet William, which I had admired for years in Grandpa's garden without knowing its name. And I planted it in his honor.

As I waited and watched in the garden and by Grandpa's side, some quiet truths emerged. I realized that Grandpa loved flowers that were always bloom; he kept a full bed of roses in his garden. But I noticed that Grandpa left plenty of room for the brief highlights. Not every nook of his garden was constantly in bloom. There was always a treasured surprise tucked somewhere.

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