Before the kettle sang, the porch peonies had already formed a line. Each bud whispered good morning to the ants who had slept in the folds, then waited for the railing to nod before it unbuttoned a single petal.
We asked the gardener by the boot-scraper. "They used to open all at once and startle the step," she said. "Now the ants take attendance. If a bud hasn't said hello, we wait. The railing is the usher."
By the next morning a neighbor had come back with a softer tread. In the notebook under the mat someone had written: please do not rush the pink one, she needed another minute with her ant. The railing nodded twice, the pink bud showed one petal, and the ants went home for breakfast as if the shift had ended on time.