Sometimes, as I age, I wonder just how small and slow I can go. As my journey takes me deeper, rather than broader, as I am moved to cast off more things, sometimes my new standard of enough is alarming. Are you sure you won’t need this?

Yes, as long-time inspiration E.F. Schumacher insisted in Small is Beautiful less is more. But sometimes this thinking small opens an abyss for me to cross.

So, today’s story is about how a single lupine in a flowerpot became a closely-watched friend.

This year, my summer enjoyment has been hampered both by a damaged hip, which limits bending. It hasn’t been easy to accept the new parameters. Early on I promised myself no new plants. No exuberant trips to favorite nurseries. For the first time, there won’t be a true garden here at Singing Meadow. Between what I hope is a temporary limit of movement, and ravages of marauding deer, I’ve had to learn to narrow my lens to include only treasured plants which can fend off flourishing weeds and marauders. But still, the gardening delight survives. For instance, the masses of peonies have never been lovelier than they have this unusually rainy year. Think also the very forgiving daylilies, whose buds now are coloring up.

Of course, my good intentions didn’t last long. In early May, longing for Spring, I nipped into one of my favorite greenhouses to buy a flat of pansies. I’m going to say it was the heady smell of masses of violas in that sun-warmed shelter which seduced me. Anyhow, as well as putting three flats of charming, fragrant, purple and yellow pansies and violas in my car trunk, a very bushy, handsome lupine plant with a tag which promised bright red flowers, came too. But this one rode in the front seat beside me so I could gloat over it on the way home.

Although I meant to plant my new lupine in a prominent spot in the former perennial garden, just to see if it could survive the weeds there, a spate of unforgiving, sleety rain tempted me to set my plant on the porch in a rustic pot close to the house, where I could keep an eye on it until better weather came.

Can a lupine be a pet? Surprisingly, for the month until bloom spikes pushed up above the radiating leaves, I nipped out often, just to enjoy it. Surprisingly, being  companioned by this handsome plant did feel like enough. Really, the leaves themselves pleased me, forming cups cradling raindrops, which magnified the water droplets most beautifully. Oh my.

Between sleety showers, I went often, just to see what was happening with the delicately hairy leaves. How could one solitary plant give so much?

It wasn’t until late-May that whitish spires began to thrust up. Eventually, the buds flushed, then reddened, until there were five ten-inch spires of a handsome carmine color. As the light moved across the porch, this color changed. Each petal was deliciously puffy. Visiting them, were a variety of equally fascinating insects.

It’s early July now, long past time to settle the lupine in its hole in the perennial bed, but the single plant, which has given so much pleasure, is still residing on my porch where I have the happiness of watching it closely.