restingmotion

It has been a difficult week here in my little bubble ,and I write this week in honor of all those who have had difficult weeks, all those who tell themselves "things are getting better", while wondering why they don't feel better, who try to buck themselves up with "we can see our loved ones soon", and even "spring! There are flowers everywhere, why don't I feel happier?"   

All my good intentions somehow went out the window this past week. I wallowed. Perhaps it helped that it rained.  "Oh it is raining", I would think, and excuse myself from working in the garden because I felt too overwhelmed, too lost in my own tears.  Or perhaps the fact that it was gray and dreary and raining fed that impulse.  There is no benefit in castigating myself for sitting in a chair one day and losing myself in mindless television.  Should-have-done has no place in the landscape of the heart.  Neither does judgement.    I have been struggling.  I will be struggling a bit more until something going on in my life is either resolved or not resolved and I come to terms.  But I am not ready to talk about that now, just to say I am struggling, and if you are struggling as well, let us hold each other up, whatever the reasons, for the reason for our struggle is irrelevant in the face of the reality of our emotions. Even if you are not struggling personally, hold someone else up today.  

 

I am sending virtual hugs.  Let us all send them around.

At the same time.  I am in the garden today.  I don't know for how long.  I don't know if I will do all I need to do.  I don't know if having my hands in the dirt, will keep tears at bay.  But if it does not, and if I do not plant everything I should plant, so be it.  If there are still weeds in my front yard when the dogwood trail opens next week, so be it.  The spring planting won't be done anyway.  April will be prime planting month and I will simply do the best I can.

 

At the same time there are, as always bits of joy in the garden.  Peas and fava beans are up. The top photo shows tiny pea shoots beneath their trellis.  Tiny spring greens and herbs are up as well.  The second photo shows a sedum sending up spring growth.  if you look closely, at about halfway between 9 and 12, on the upper left, you see a tiny green shoot.  That is one of the daffodils I planted late.  They are at least sending up leaves, which means they will survive, and I will be rewarded with flowers in the future.  So often our efforts fail to show immediate results and we grow disheartened, or I, at least, grow disheartened.

Still no more daffodil blooms, but it is early spring yet.  We have had a mild winter in many ways, but also a consistently and evenly chill one.  The forsythia and Bradford pears are in bloom, the early magnolias, so it is early yet, even though it seems we are so desperate for promise about now, and we wish for nothing more than the promise of abundance.  Yet, as you can see, the daffodils are full of buds.  I just have to remind myself it is early.  And remind myself again, plant some early daffodils next year.  I too need the reassurances of spring blooms.

I am actually working the front yard, the public face of the garden.  I have been in the process of planning out my first ever perennial bed in sunshine.  I haven't planned the entire bed yet, only four small sections, figuring it is better to plant a block at a time.  In planning this far I have already exhausted my spring planting budget and quite possibly the amount I can physically plant in one season.  We will see how that goes.  It is time to get shrubs in now, and to transplant peonies.  It remains a little early for many flowering perennials and so thinking ahead is important.  I have absorbed lessons from observation, watching landscape crews plant the small things only to stomp on them while the planted the big thing that went alongside. 

I am planning on getting the three peonies in this weekend.  One will go in each of those roughly 3-ft squares.  But I also need to prep the areas between the peonies and the boxwood hedge because those plants won't go in for a few weeks yet.  I don't want to be standing or kneeling on new peonies when I am trying to plant those small spaces.  The area between the peonies and the grass will be easier, well, obviously, because I can stand and kneel on the grass.  

 

I am excited and nervous.  I have had fun playing with ideas and colored pencils.  I will have fun with the plants, with waiting and watching, and I may have to move everything around next year, because I have no idea if I've made the right choices or not.  But at least it is a start.

And because, I am still on tenterhooks, and because I may grow tired and weary and even teary again, I want to be reminded that even sadness is important.  I want to look at this picture of the spent camellia blossoms on the back patio.  The plant itself is still heavily laden, and beautiful, but this, this carpet of red, this carpet of promise and loss, this too is beautiful and worth celebrating.

 

Hugs to all. 

Hello Spring!

It always seems to happen this way, I am poking about in the garden, happily puttering, breathing in the soothing scent of soil and new leaves and poof, just like that I go from feeling like I have all the time in the world to being slightly frazzled.  Frazzled in a good way, but nonetheless, it means I have work to do.

Mostly this past weekend I was weeding and doing a little trimming here and there.  I posted a photo of my first, and so far only, actual daffodil blossom on Instagram.  These have been in the ground a while.  More than once have I feared they had been accidentally displaced by workmen or overzealous grounds grew.  Luckily not yet.  I planted some other daffodils over the winter, too late actually and they are not yet sending up shoots.  They arrived about the same time as Poncho and in my state of overwhelm I forgot them and left them out at room temperature far too long.  I hope I will still get greenery, although I doubt there will be flowers; at least that way I know they will survive and build strength for next year.  If not, I must admit to having made yet another miscalculation.

Mostly the garden remains strongest in the realms of potential rather than spring loveliness.  The hellebores are fully open now and lush, although the side yard itself still looks a bit on the scraggly side, waiting for various woodland plants to emerge.  And the camellias are blooming nicely, indicating that they have indeed survived the upheaval of construction.  This year I am seeing the largest and most profuse blossoms yet.  Blossoms the thrill me even as I worry about the way the weight of the heavy bloom has the branches leaning downward, almost touching the table below. 

But truthfully various small bits and buds thrill me almost as the large showy camellia blossoms and the hellebores -- and hellebores fill me with boundless joy.  The blueberries are budding again.  They budded in January and I feared for them, feared the devastation of frost on tender growth. And here I am in mid March surrounded by promise and resilience.  

And the hydrangeas are in various stages of bud formation, mostly with barely discernible leaf buds visible only if I look closely as I am weeding around them.  This one however is a little more adventurous.  Or is it reckless?  only time will tell.  

And as to that sense of being slightly overwhelmed I mentioned earlier, whence did it arrive?  I noticed that the peonies, which have been sheltered in pots behind the house for nearly two years now, are starting to bud.  That means I need to get them transplanted before they completely open.  Peonies don't really like being transplanted, and I am already pushing their boundaries for acceptable settling-in time.  But I hadn't yet planned the perfect spot, so some time yesterday was spent out in the front flower bed with paper,  pencils, and measuring tape. 

There are only five peonies to plant, and the ground to prepare as well.  Doesn't seem like much does it?   Five peonies and the ten encore azaleas I picked up on Friday. I tell myself "I'll plant a little here, I'll plant a little there" and then suddenly I am in the thick of it.  And yet every new leaf, every new bud is filled with hope..

 

Hello spring!

 

 

February Books

As I started to pull this post together in my head, my initial memory of my reading adventures in February was that I did not read much, and that my reading was mostly easy and forgettable.  As I compile the list, however, I see that my memories are only partially accurate, that, like so many other things in my life, I move in cycles, cycles of reading and cycles of not reading,  and although it was not a month of complex reading, I did not do so badly after all.

 

First the List:

13. Stuart Woods, Hush Hush. 

14. Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race.

15. Annette Valentine, Eastbound from Flagstaff.

16. D.E. Stevenson, Anna and Her Daughters.

17. Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.

18. Don DeLillo, The Silence.

19. Joe Ide, Righteous. 

20. Lydia Millet, A Children's Bible. 

 

As I look at the list now, I see there was light, palette-cleansing, brain-resetting reading -- fun escape reads. I always rate them higher than they deserve on a purely technical level, at least the Stone Barrington novels, based purely on enjoyment.  These are fast, flippant reads offering a mindless escape, without placing many demands. I did think Stone showed promise in the early novels; but by volume 56 his appeal is growing tired, the promise of his youth having faded, at least from this reader's perspective.  In this volume the violence was more brutal than in the past few years; alas it did not make up for boredom.  Joe Ide's IQ novels are new to me and so far I have enjoyed them thoroughly.  Isaiah is a fairly complex character, but although the writing still crackles, and Isaiah intrigues, and there are moments that are laugh-out-loud funny, number two is not quite as ridiculously infectious as was the first.  

 

There were books that made me cry and books that made me think, sometimes both in the same book.  I thoroughly enjoyed The Silence, far more so than While Noise, which I read in January. Both books are thought provoking, both books are more art than story, and perhaps I enjoyed the second more only because the sardonicism was slightly less pointedly cruel.  But that is just me.  Frankl made me cry, as did Oluo.  So You Want To Talk About Race, reads like a brutally honest conversation with a friend, a book in which Ijeoma Oluo masterfully reigns in rage and emotion without hiding it, allowing it to pierce without explosion. It is, without question, one of the most powerfully mind-altering and moving of the recent crop of  books I have read about race.  Perhaps my reaction comes from already having read so many other books, perhaps it is just that I am drawn to the act of telling of one's story.  

 

There was a book I intentionally reread, and I am happy to have done so.  I listened to The Children's Bible  on Audible for my December book club meeting and I was intrigued by the narrative voice enough that I wanted to hold the book in my hand and actually read the words.  It is a book that is improved by reading, and a powerful story as well.  I know these parents, I know these children, I know this world on the brink of natural disaster. Alas we all do and this future is unsettlingly close.  The Children's Bible is a short novel and Millet takes on many broad themes. One might think this would weaken the story, but it does not. The author weaves the story together artfully in a way that makes all this stuff, stuff that we want to ignore and not take seriously, all the more powerful.  The flattening of the narrative voice, the easy-breezy social commentary, the exploration of religion, both flippant and childishly serious, are deftly drawn; all are unsettling, and unsettling familiar. I found this to be another book that slips under the skin.

 

And there were some books that I would not have read. Admittedly I read both books, and they were well enough drawn and the stories compelling enough that I wanted to know what happened next, even if occasionally just barely so.  Both were selections for my two very different book clubs.   Both, surprisingly,  led to significant and interesting discussions in which I was happy to participate.  Didn't love the books; did love the discussion.  I have read other books by D. E. Stevenson, but long ago, and I cannot say how much my own tastes in reading have evolved over those years, although surely they have.  I would say that Anna and Her Daughters was enjoyable enough, but was not her best and there were times when the issues of format and the demands of genre chafed.  I found the writing in Eastbound From Flagstaff to be sanctimonious, not to the point that I abandoned the book, although there were moments, but, as I said, I did want to see what happened, and so curiosity won out.  

 

But the simple truth is I could have been just as disappointed in the two suspense/mystery novels that I discussed first as I was in these two, and the novels by both Ide and Woods require significant suspension of disbelief.  Perhaps the only difference was in expectation, or my own inner biases.  For me I could accept the flippancy, the very over-the-top ridiculousness of Hush-Hush and Righteous over what I perceived as earnestness in both Anna and Her Daughters, and Eastbound from Flagstaff. I do not think it is my place to judge, merely to admit that I am not perhaps the best fit for those books.   Romance, crime/mystery, and Christian fiction are the three most profitable fiction genres today and I have read from all of them, perhaps in differing proportions in different stages of my life. At the moment I lean more consistently in one direction but perhaps it would serve me well to explore other genres a bit more fully.  Looking at my own choice of words here,  "flippancy", "ridiculous", "earnestness" it seems I am looking for something more of a romp, wicked or not, in my escapist fiction, over the treacly or soothing.  

 

That may change next month however.  

This and That

I have been a bit under the weather this week, battling a sinus infection that probably rolled in with bad weather Sunday night.  The sun is shining today, and my sinuses are better.  I am still moving more slowly than normal but whether this is due to the lingering effects of a massive sinus headache or just the routine purling of my own thought-processes and temperament, I have no idea.  

I will at least get this post up this week, although it is already apparent that I have failed in my goal of three posts per week, one to each of three blogs.  I am less inclined to fret about this than perhaps I was in bygone years, and I think this is actually to the good.  A goal is something to work toward, as I recall, not a hard and fast rule, and at this stage of my life I am inclined to think that meaning simply comes from being present, rather than from branding or accounting in any market-place sense of the word.  As I write that I feel brave.  It will not be long before I am once again plagued with doubts.  It seems to me that the doubting, the questioning, the challenging, all of them building up to communing, which must be in some way related to communicating, both with ourselves, with the world, with others.

 

I don't know where I am going with this.  Perhaps I had better stick with the accounting.

 

On that front I can't say that I have accomplished much.  On Sunday, I disassembled and cleaned out the coffee grinder, the first time I had done that since probably around Thanksgiving.  Usually this is a monthly task, but well, sometimes even the best routines fall by the wayside.  

 

I must admit that the quality of my espresso improved noticeably.  I had avoided espresso over the last couple of weeks, mostly making Americanos, because there was a tinge of bitterness and weakness in the espresso.  What a joy it was to sit in the sun Sunday morning, espresso in hand.  The timing was fortuitous as that espresso was greatly appreciated on Monday when I was felled by a sinus headache so severe movement was an issue.  After the first two espressos I staggered upstairs for a nap.  I managed to get back down to the kitchen for an Americano in the afternoon before curling up with a book, my head cocked at just the perfect angle, the one where it did not feel like it would explode and fall to the floor, grateful for good coffee, good books, a blanket, a comfy sofa, a cat by my side.  I was reading Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, which I thoroughly enjoyed:  A slow, thoughtful, and lovely novel and a read filled with characters drawn with compassion.  Now I am on Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half which has been on my stack forever.  I am not yet far enough along to tell you what I think, just that I have been drawn in.

 

I have been feeling increasingly better since Tuesday, but I have remained in low gear.  I did organize the hall linen closet, which remains somewhat bare.  I need to buy new sheets for the guest bed.  I need blankets as well, but I would rather knit those.  There is no accounting for that.  I could buy something perfectly functional for less money, and certainly less time, but that is not what interests me and what I have will do. I see no need to fill the space just because there is space to fill.   As you see from the little hollow he made in the yellow cashmere throw, Moisés took a nap  when I wandered away and left the door open.  I also seem to have a lifetime supply of Kleenex.   Somehow after the surgery to repair my broken nose, I have tended toward far less sinus congestion and Kleenex use than previously.  I suppose there is a gift in everything.

 

The camellias began opening on Monday and the one shrub is filled with blossoms.  There is another that has been struggling; it has buds but they have not yet opened and its ultimate fate is as yet undecided. I planted peas on Tuesday.  I have cleaned out the herb bed in preparation for planting some sorrel and some lime balm, although I suspect it remains too cool for the balm to germinate. Other spring greens also need to go in the ground, but whether my timing is right or not is always a guess.  I haven't yet settled into the groove of Tennessee gardening.  But then a garden is always an experiment, a learning experience, and a reminder that much as we may prefer to pretend otherwise, we are not in control.

 

The sunshine and the advent of warmer temperatures seem to have sparked some kind of latent urge to clean and refresh, odd enough for me, and also an urge to sort through stuff and declutter (less unusual), as evidenced in the closet cleaning above.  I cleaned the glass in the front door and the side windows, and then sat down in the living room to sort through the mail and admire the afternoon light in the entry hall.  It seems like I have been fascinated with the entry hall lately, posting a couple of photos on Instagram.  Perhaps I am simply in the mood for welcoming others in, inviting life in, although quite frankly I don't see that actually happening all that soon.  There is something about spring however and the seasonal urge to blossom-forth I suppose.  

 

I was talking to an acquaintance the other day, we ran into each in line at the hardware store, and she was complaining about how her son had painted his living room a color she did not like, how she hated homes where she noticed the colors of the walls, and in her opinion walls should all be neutral.  This was shortly after I took the above photo. I think I smiled to myself and thought she would hate my house.  That is not unusual; many people feel. they could not live with the color.  Obviously I am a different sort of person. This bothers me not a whit.  I should love my house, you should love yours; we should simply learn to find our commonalities and accept our differences, especially perhaps when our children disagree with us.

 

As I was cleaning the windows I noticed that I should really clean the window sills and the corners that stay in the shade in the winter but it is too early for that.  I would clean and they would just get all nasty again after pollen season.  Better to wait.  The same thought occurred to me regarding some of the bedding plants.  My neighbors have been out cleaning out their beds, and although I admire their industry, and their manicured and mulched beds, although I acknowledge that it all needs to be done, and chastise myself for my lack of ambition, it still feels too early to me.  The nights are still too cold; creatures still take shelter, tender leaves and buds need protection.  The time will be soon, but not yet.  Of course what usually happens is that I think it is too early and then suddenly it is late and I feel rushed. The flower heads are still on my hydrangeas, the nuts I left on the ground have provided food for birds and squirrels.  I think of myself as living in a conversation with my house, with my garden, with my place on this earth.  Whatever I don't get to, Mother Nature will handle in her own way.  In fact the bed which I am not going to landscape this year, where I planned to put in some buckwheat, currently looks lovely with a nice crop of lush, low growing weeds.  I feel no need to disturb them at this time.

 

I suppose there has to be one of us in every neighborhood.