Faint scents

I spent the afternoon cleaning up last year's herb and flower beds. I know I should have done it in the fall, but there were still some flowers lingering. Then without much warning it was cold and wet and the time was past. But today, on a winter afternoon so sunny that I needed my sun hat I decided it was time for a thorough cleaning. By the birdbath that is really a watering bowl for the chickens, I sat down to remove the grass that was intruding among the sprouts that with spring will become delicate purple irises. I worked at digging carefully around the bulbs, trying hard not to disturb them. My chickens, who had coming running at the whispered scent of freshly turned soil,  were not so delicately jumping on anything that moved including my gloved fingers. So I moved to my kitchen garden which is inside a wire fence and off limits to the hens.
  I pulled away the dead stems of last year's glorious blooms and began scooping out the fallen leaves that were covering this year's tiny green shoots before I remembered that it was a winter afternoon. The sun had me fooled just as it was fooling the tiny shoots so I gently tucked them back in under their blankets of damp smelling leaves. The northwest is notorious for late freezes. We had snow flurries once on April 12th. I remember because it was my parent's anniversary, but that was really a long time ago. Nonetheless, like a mother sending a small child out overly bundled up "just in case," I kept the tender shoots covered up though not layered quite as thick.
 When I reached the herbs the faint scents of oregano,  mint, and thyme teased my senses. How could those withered brown leaves still have fragrance after all the rain and wind? But they did. And just how many holly trees will try to grow before they figure out that they are not invited to join the kitchen garden? Four or more I had to take out just today.
 Working in the garden, pulling weeds, cleaning up, these things free my mind to wander. Sometimes I make plans and think about what I will plant. Other days, like today I spend time worrying about things I can do nothing about. Friends going through hard times. A grandchild who is ill. My mother, who is fragile and no longer communicates with me, but still, she has the soft scent of my childhood about her. A winter afternoon.