Tao Yuanming Plants Flowers

Tao Yuanming chose chrysanthemums over court robes, and the verse remembers him not for what he walked away from but for what he returned to each morning: the same patch of soil, the same flowers the wind had flattened overnight. This stick lands in your hand because something in your relationship has been knocked sideways recently. A misunderstanding, a missed birthday, a long silence after a hard conversation, a season where the two of you stopped tending whatever garden you planted together. The verse isn't asking whether the storm was your fault. It's noticing that you're still standing in the courtyard, still holding the pot.

What the stick reflects back is that you already know the answer to the question you came here with. The flowers are not dead. They've been blown over. The work is unglamorous, early-morning, knees-in-the-dirt work, the kind nobody applauds because it looks like nothing happened. You wanted a sign about whether to stay, whether to reach out, whether to forgive, whether to be forgiven. The grade is 中吉, moderately good, because replanting works, but only if you actually go out there before the sun gets high. The pity for flowers in the verse is yours to feel, or not.