A building neighbor knocked on my back door a couple days ago.

The sound took me by surprise as I don’t normally expect someone would visit me at just past 9:00 in the morning and choose to use that entrance.

She walked over to my sink with an air of familiarity I might not have anticipated.  She grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser, sprayed it with Windex she must have seen on the countertop and cleaned a glass vase pulled out from behind my sink. Then, she placed a handful of hydrangea stems in it and fluffed out the arrangement in a casual-looking  but purposeful way.

I like to use the area behind my sink, often a space that, in my view, usually goes to waste, to store vases. She then rattled off several excuses for what was, in essence, a nice gesture.

“The bush is just so full. Many buds are practically dragging on the ground.”  “I just have the one color.” “They were just going to. die soon, anyway.”

She closed with a statement oi fact no one in the neighborhood would dare dispute. ”I love flowers.”

No doubt about it, our embryonic selves must have swum at opposite ends of the gene pool. She is an interior designer and I’ve always been more of an irreverent sort of wordsmith. Not that she can’t appreciate books and I’d dismiss a nice arrangement from Mother Nature, but —

I just wouldn’t make the time she makes to dig in the dirt, or prune, or shop at Home Depot to pick out what to plant, or drag the hose around and water, or do any of the chores involved in making a small backyard garden a place you’d want to hang out.

Six “owners,” live in our building. It is now over one hundred years old and was converted from apartments to  a condominium building around the turn of the millennium. Some owners add summer flowers to faux redwood decks in the back of their units, but no one is as involved in landscaping as she is.

Besides the small strips of grass between our building and the buildings to the east or west of ours, she plants a variety of colorful annuals and perennials along modest wire fencing between ours and adjacent properties.

She has even planted and tended simple blooms in the alley between our parking pad and the tracks for the commuter train, which runs downtown.

She is very proud of her green thumb and very protective of her garden in the city.  (“Urbs in horto,” “city in a garden” is, in fact, one of our town’s nick names.)

I’ve seen her run to our storage area to find buckets to put over newly spouted alley plants to keep bug spray from seeping into her controlled environment. I think she’s even asked the city not to spray pesticides along the stretch of track under her watch.  (Good luck with that.)

Some of the folks down the block might think she’s crazy but will agree that we have the nicest looking patch of alley on the northwest side.

For the most part, I’m a good neighbor. I will drag deliveries into our front foyer after left at our outer door by UPS or FedEx or Amazon. I take minutes at our summer board meeting… but everyone with whom I share an address knows better than to ask me to care for their plants while they’re out of town.

I could guess at possible reasons, and just sum things up by saying “It’s not my thing.”

Yet, I admire her, the extent of her efforts, the purity of her feelings; her passion to tend to her garden whether someone notices or not.

I will laugh when I catch her in the alley bending over blooms that could be doing better or lingering over a fragrance unique to what she chose to plant where she did. Invariably, she’ll be wearing some sort of pastel colored sweatshirt and compatible color themed floral print leggings and matching clogs.  (What can I say? She’s girlie girl and has a very specific aesthetic.)

I used to bristle at friends or anyone who I think should know me well for buying me a birthday gift that’s more about what they like than a reflection of what I’d get myself.

I endured a challenging couple months. My AC system had some sort of leak, and I was still batting about a repair strategy. My volunteer work brought me face to face with an old woman who suffered from dementia and that forced me to confront some of my own fears about growing old alone. My dog had been ingesting cicadas during every morning walk and I contemplated the possible effects on her.

“I love flowers,” my neighbor said as she motioned me to give her instructions on where she should put the vase.

“Behind the sink,” I said quietly. “I  like to look at them when I’m making dinner.”

Being thought of is no small thing.