Tag: garden

those thousand-mile journeys

The picture is of the window ledge over my kitchen sink. It is, for the most part, my plant hospital for plants that are not faring well and need special attention. Most of those plants heal, start thriving, and get put in the living room that gets attention but not daily and more light. But what I wanted to write about is the parable I see in the two paper white bulbs growing in water that are close to the window in the back of the photo.

I love paper white narcissus for the winter holidays, although many years I start them too late or forget to find/order some at all. This year I remembered and may have a few blooms by New Year’s.

These two healthy bulbs were ordered from my favorite bulb distributor and put in water on the same day. The bulb on the left took off like gangbusters. I think it was in water less than two full days when tiny roots appeared, the greens followed quickly, and a tiny bud has formed. The bulb on the left was the opposite. It has taken a few weeks for any roots to appear. They are short, and there are few of them. The greens have hardly begun. 

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wednesday

I’ve left breakfast dishes in the sink this morning. On purpose. If I was my mother I would have washed them as soon as Julia left for the day. If I was myself ten or 14 years ago, I would have washed them as Julia got into the van.  Back then, I needed to control something and washing dishes was a doable task. An easy success. And I needed success. 

Now, I am willing to let them slide. To let them wait until . . . . until later.  I will wash before I go to bed tonight. So, okay, I still have some need of control.

Instead of washing, I poured a glass of clean water, taped off a page of my sketchbook and spritzed the water colors. I am trying to paint. I am painting. I cannot seem to sit in meditation these days. I wander, I obsess, I plan. I slip too easily into past and future. I bring my mind back time after time, but I am not patient with myself, with the practice that I’ve had for years.

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micro-climates

“A microclimate is a local set of atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas, often slightly but sometimes substantially.” ~some website

I’ve never noticed that I had one in any garden I’ve made.  My neighbor, Maria, had one. Along the side of her house that faced my side door in Madison, daffodils bloomed at least a week before the rest of the neighborhood or my front or back gardens.  The thing about her microclimate was that she did nothing to it.  I mean, the bulbs were planted and the bed cleaned and tended, but no special watering or fertilizing went on. Those daffodils just returned year after year a week or so earlier than any others.  And I was able to step outside of my side door in the early spring and be greeted by their absolute glorious yellow-ness.

And I’d like to report that I may have my own microclimate right by the stairs off my back porch.  I noticed it last week. This is my third spring in this house–during the first one, I was still unpacking, last year, it was the front garden bed that I paid most attention to, this spring, I have the eyes for smaller things.

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return

Happy Summer! (lots of this was written over the past 10 days)

Today’s longest day antics: A screening of flying lessons, the film by Sarah Waldron that Julia is in, late lunch with a friend, and horror movies tonight.

Yesterday, June 20, was our really longest day—up at 5 am to begin our ride to Jersey City for the Golden Door Film Festival, a stop at The Cloisters when we realized we were way too early to check into our hotel.  Loved The Cloisters. Hadn’t been there since before Cheshire was born. Finished the ride, found our hotel and some parking —Jersey City has not changed as much as I had imagined in the century since I was there —took naps, went to the opening night party for the festival, saw a bunch of very short and short films and fell into bed somewhere just before midnight.

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because it’s june, june, june, june . . .

I am a gardener.  

I’ve begun at least four memoir pieces with that sentence but honestly, I wondered if I would ever really feel like I was that declaration again.  At the blue Victorian that we moved to from Madison and in which we spent the Covid years, I cultivated a small vegetable patch that was shaded part of the day by the houses around it.  It is never a glorious garden but it gave us something to do that first summer of shut down and there were tomatoes and greens and peppers and a small pumpkin. 

Early on in my tenancy at our present house, I asked the landlord if I could garden.  The foundation planting was sparse and old. There must have been other shrubs and bushes at one time but what was left was four plants spread far apart and planted up close to the house.  

My landlord said I could do what I wanted to do and even volunteered a bit of help—his landscapers trimmed bushes that needed the trimming and even took the grass up when I decided on the shape of the front garden bed.  

I started planning the front bed while I was sick and unable to do much running around.  As I began the planning, I wondered if it made sense to invest in a garden that would take a few years to develop and cultivate in a rental house but I came to the idea that I have made three gardens, each in a house that I owned.  But that after planting and tending and loving those gardens, I sold the houses and left those gardens. And it wasn’t so much the beauty of the gardens that I was/am most attached to, it is the process of making a garden and making a garden in the front of this house that we live in would give me pleasure.  

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more letting go

I could ask how many times? How much more? Again?  Really?

A plastic box, book size, has been sitting on the kitchen floor for a few months.  I could use the excuse of a hard winter of feeling sick as an excuse for just leaving it there but it would be just that — an excuse. It was one of those boxes filled with what needed to be moved 18 months ago, what had some sentimental value, what did not find a home in the new house and what did not really warrant storing for another day. But to give it all away or to throw it all away felt sinful.

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expertise

I wrote this piece for the memoir class I am taking. It is the last of five garden related pieces. I is also where we are today, where I am. And so, I’m putting it here.

Julia’s new, shorter hair cut. So very happy she finally agreed to it.

I am a gardener.

I notice what goes on in gardens: flowers and vegetables and herbs, perennials, biennials and abundantly blooming annuals that don’t stop until the first frost.  I notice trees and bushes, decorative, productive and the volunteers that can be the bane in a gardener’s vision.  I notice what the bunnies are eating, what cannot survive without six hours of sun, what the weeds are choking out and what thrives in a microclimate close to a dryer vent on the north side of a house.  I know which tulips were planted as bulbs last autumn and which were planted full grown two weeks ago along a walkway with a carefully planned casualness. I admire the window boxes on Beacon Hill—lush, overfull and overflowing, miniature landscapes in harmonies of pinks and creams and lavenders punctuated with trailing greens.

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like no other

So, here we are.  The 25th of August.  On my calendar the day is marked as Cheshire’s due date and although I am completed schooled in the idea that due dates are approximations and not to be planned around at all, my eyes opened this morning and I am all expectation.

I cannot compare it to my own due date either to give birth or to meet my child.  I cannot compare it to first days of school—mine or my girls. Not wedding days—mine or Cheshire’s. The plans for those days seemed solid.  We had set paths that only needed to be followed and at the end of the aisle was a known quantity. And it is not like meeting someone and falling in love—those dates are never circled on a calendar. There may be some hazy hope but no definition expectation.

This waiting time is all possibility and unknown. How will he fit into our lives, take up our time, burrow his way into our hearts. This is the possibility of a new reason to open eyes and start the day.

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last week

Garden sprite

I began this when I woke up and drifted to my favorite chair to write a bit before getting back to a few more z’s.  Finishing up about twelve hours later.

It is the darkest part of night. A lone cricket in my little, dry vegetable garden sings intermittently.  A very slight breeze comes in through a dining room window.  The breeze and the cricket’s song are all that breaks the solemn, velvet of the night.  

A week ago plus a few hours, I dropped Julia off for a week long camp. Amazing. The week and the weekend before went so well.  Again amazing.

The last day of camp, the units put on a camp show for caregivers.  Last year, Julia would not participate in the show.  This year she did!  Not anything amazing but dancing and singing with her cohort.  At the end of the show, the counselors acknowledged those campers who were aging out this year.  This can be somewhat of a trigger for Julia—she has always hated talk of growing up and getting older.  And of course, this was an announcement of transition.  Well, she did great!  She took the tee shirt offered, hugged her counselors and sat down.

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summer bounty

A big bowl of tomatoes—so many that I can save a small bowl for the next two days (there are more ripening behind those I picked today) and throw the rest into a big pot to make a simple sauce that I will freeze for the winter.  I have refrained from cooking inside during our heat wave—hot food never tastes good to me when it is hot—preferring to grill a bit of protein on my small electric grill (A nod of thanks to Cindy for gifting the grill to me when I left Madison.) and making huge salad with bought greens and herbs from the garden.  Everything from the garden has more flavor and vegetables melt into one another so much more companionably than their supermarket cousins.

I let the tomatoes cook down for hours and what is left is the sweet essence of summer.  I expect the pleasure long after I’ve pulled up the plants and cleaned the garden for winter.

We are quiet today with nothing planned.  Some drawing, a load of wash, some editing for me and reading. Julia plays her music—Ukulele chords are just beginning to make an impression and she has a new cello piece.  Then, Julia picks up her basketball and bounces it around the house until she becomes bored.  She wants to go to the small park around the corner.  She wants to go alone, but capitulates to my entreaty to go with her and sit far away.  I am.

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