restingmotion

Still Here

Hi.  I haven't forgotten about blogging, I just seem to have entered an extended fallow period where I have nothing to say.   

 

I have been busy rearranging furniture, sorting out books and finally moving myself into this house and making it mine.  In many ways this is good, and I feel at home in my own house for the first time since we moved to Tennessee. At yet, the house and my life at the moment seem more like a protective shell, or perhaps better yet, a mirror.  The surface is reflected but the interior remains hidden.

 

Truthfully this has been a long time coming.  Interests that have lain dormant for years are reawakening. I had been sloughing off bits of myself for years, shedding everything that distracted me from the task at hand, until there was nothing to spare. For those few of you who have read my various blogs over the years, this may have been quite evident. Although I knew I was struggling, my understanding was shrouded in mist.  I saw only what I needed to see.  In some sense I had become a shell of myself.  

 

Now I am simply following a meandering path, rediscovering those bits and pieces.  It is something like following a trail of breadcrumbs out of the forest.  I am sure that my focus will return, that bookcases will be built, that I will settle down, and that my voice will return.  July may be a scattered month.  Part of the month will be spent Dallas helping my mom when she returns home from rehab following bilateral knee replacements. At the end of the month family and friends will join me in the Hudson Valley and we will scatter George's ashes in the Hudson. Although we cannot predict when transitions will end, I am already looking forward to that date as a closure of sorts, a time to say goodbye.

Apparently I Missed the Flowers

When we moved to Tennessee I wondered if I would miss gardening. I intentionally bought a house in a PUD, recognizing that I didn't have time and accepted that I would rather be somewhere where someone else worked at keeping up appearances, at least landscaping wise.

 

Still I wondered. I would ask myself, rather abstractly, if I wanted to buy planters to flank the garage door. I would admire the pretty annuals in the neighbors' yards and gently chide myself about my lack of motivation. And yet I did nothing. My wishes for flowers were nothing but idle fancy, fluff and dreams, nothing concrete.

 

Until now.

 

It started with two hanging baskets. I was at Kroger, not thinking about flowers, thinking about a few things I needed at the house before family arrived later that afternoon. Flowers caught me by surprise. I bought two hanging baskets. I set them in the front flower bed by the front bed and did nothing further. I watered them daily, faithfully, tending their promise of beauty to come. But I didn't know what to do with them. My mind was elsewhere.

 

The day after everyone left, one week after George's death. I saw two large oval planters and I knew they needed to come home with me. They were delivered that same day. For a week they sat: empty. Baby steps.

I started on Memorial Day weekend. Hours were spent wandering through nurseries, looking for plants. Everything is different here. The light is different than it was at my former home. There I was mostly planting in shade; here I have full sun. But the plant selection is different too, even the annuals. It was both fun and overwhelming. 

 

I like the effect so far. I have no idea how they will hold up over the summer, if these plants will play harmoniously together or if one will bully the rest, overwhelming everything and taking over.

Once the planters were filled, I addressed those two lonely hanging baskets. I realized that I was suffering a problem of context. It was not the plants themselves that were the problem, but the potting medium. Two pots and two plant stands later they grace an empty corner of my front walk and my house is taking baby steps toward becoming a home. It no longer looks like the plainest, loneliest house on the street.

Two pots became four.  Once I got my hands in the dirt. Once I saw the flowers I couldn't stop. I missed the dirt. I missed the flowers. Four pots have become six, eight.  I am still planting. And now it seems that yes, I am home.