007

It was hot. Her hair clung to her neck in dewy ringlets of perspiration. She was quite glad now that she had relented to let go of the auburn tangles that used to crawl down her back. 
The sun drew the freckles on her neck out from their winter slumber. She brushed away the bit of soil that had landed on her arms as she worked in the soft earth. The spring had come on hot and heavy. A few good days of rain followed by two real warm ones and it felt like late July on this May afternoon. Early weeding and bud planting wasn't usually like this. She more often found herself bundled up in the early season of yard work than sweating bullets and wishing she could just go bare. In all reality she likely could. No one actually around for about 2 miles but the driveway up to the house was very open and trucks ambled down the earthen-wear-colored road at a pace slow enough to make a nude middle-aged woman very conspicuous in the otherwise pale spring landscape. So there she knelt. Hands sweating inside the cotton gloves that clutched a trowel and a plant intermittently.
The labor of botany was a love she had for as long as she could remember. The reward through the summer, season of blooms and fruit, was so satisfying it gave her a high unlike anything or anyone ever had. 
The smile came to her face as she reflected on the years past of seeds and stalks and leaves. As she gazed up at the hot noon sun and thought of that first fully bloomed sunflower of her 8th summer, the aneurysm burst and took her. Her body launched forward and planted itself besides the buds of new life.