Office Job or Garden Job?
It is 7:30 in the morning and I get off my commuter bus in downtown DC near the State Dept, to enjoy a 9-block walk to my office. It’s Springtime in DC, so flowering trees and baby greens abound. DC is a major tourist attraction, so all the monument grounds are landscaped and full of colorful pansies.

As I walk into the heart of the city, green expanse changes to pavement, stone, asphalt, brick. Businesses build raised beds and fill them with annuals. Trees stand up out of the concrete.

I have been walking these streets early every morning for many years, and because it is early, I always encounter the “corporate groundskeepers.” These are the middle-to-old-age men whose job it is to hose down the sidewalks outside the tall office buildings, and to water the plants out front in their beds and containers and window boxes.

I always have the same reaction as I approach one, stepping through the puddles he is making, and over the large garden hoses splayed out over the sidewalk: I wonder if he'd be surprised to know how much I would love to have his job, if just for the mornings. Here I am, in my business commuter clothes – a suit, stockings and sneakers. I envy him in his green chinos and boots, his garden gloves and t-shirt, out there in the misty early morning cool, tending to lush, green, living things.

A few steps further I notice another man, this one in a spiffy uniform standing very straight and tall. His job is overseeing the very posh lobby in which he stands – polished brass, glass, marble columns, intricate iron patterns, art on the walls. He is looking out the front window at the gardener at work. I wonder if he is thinking the same thing that I am.