By seven the porch is already pretending to be a very small hotel lobby. The primroses have been issued tiny keys for their corollas. Each bloom greets the top step first, nods to the railing, and only then unlocks a single morning.
We asked at the kiosk. "I nearly turned the handle of the day myself," said the woman who sells paper packets of seeds. "Then a primrose dipped its key toward the stair, the railing bowed, and the light came out as if it had been waiting in the lock."
The gardener kept a pencil note in the complaint-and-thanks book: if the step has not been greeted, please do not force the sunrise. The next morning a neighbor came back with the same watering can and waited through the greeting, the nod, and the one quiet click. She said the porch smelled like the first cup of tea, though the kettle was still indoors.