Chris is about to create a seafood linguini pasta (gluten free for me!) with a mini harvest of tomato, chili and basil from our garden. He is generously contributing the photo for this post; he shared it on Facebook and I was envious of the beauty and clarity so he agreed to send it along to me. After all, I did help to grow the bounty.
Life has been providing a bounty of late; a bounty of activity, challenges, opportunities and new beginnings. I have spent time in my garden but not at the computer. The gardener and the writer often have to compete for precious time, in spite of my aching desire to do both.
I took four days in early July and created a personal, mini retreat in my own home. Chris was off to Nova Scotia and there was nothing on the calendar. After the demands of this year so far I knew that it was time for some rest, rejuvenation and physical detox. My body felt overloaded, overweight, chronically tired, sore and starved for good nutrition and quiet attention. I had to let the garden be and know that tending to my own "mother earth" was just as important. I stayed in, took baths, slept, began to eliminate some foods from my diet that I suspected were not agreeing with me (coffee, alcohol, meat, sugar, dairy, wheat - to name a few), wrote in my journal, read quietly, did yoga - you know, everything you pay to do at a high priced spa! What a novel concept - to stay home and take some time off.
After just four days I was already feeling reacquainted with my self and more in tune and in touch. The aches and pains were dissipating and so was some of the extra weight. On the last day I ventured back out into my garden, determined to maintain the slower pace and resist the temptation to "make up for lost time" by overworking. I quietly pulled weeds, planted a couple of things, cleaned out some oak leaves that were still hanging around and drank in the sunshine that my body was craving.
I know right where I was, hunched over to clean up under our huge pittosporum when I had an "ah-ha!' moment that was more like a whisper from some other place - perhaps I got close enough to the garden fairies to hear their tiny words of wisdom.
Anyone who knows me or has been following this blog can probably sense that I feel pulled in many different directions and a bit overwhelmed at times. I am blessed to have created the career that I have, but the older I get the more I am also drawn to community service and using my talents in other ways. Five years ago I cofounded Swan Songs, a program that fulfills musical last wishes for music lovers who are facing the end of their life here. I love this work and have devoted and donated my time to create it, nurture it and run it for many years - long before the official corporate filing in 2005. The work is very gratifying to me and we have been successful at establishing a solid foundation for it.
Still, at the end of the day my personal bills await and I have to go out and earn money since I am not yet an independently wealthy philanthropist. Swan Songs needs more attention and it is a calling that I can not and will not walk away from. It seems obvious now that transitioning from a volunteer to a paid position would be the natural next step, but I have resisted it for a long time. Change and a deeper commitment can be frightening and I tend to subscribe to black and white thinking - if I say yes to this new role am I saying no to the music that has sustained me for 35 years?
The fairies helped me to remember that sometimes you have to trust your instinct and take one step without knowing how it will end and what will grow from it. I realized that I can make room in my life to tend to this very important project and gratefully accept payment for my time, thereby taking pressure off of another area of my life. I'm not ready to hang up the guitar, but there's no reason to at this time. Under that pittosporum I saw it all very clearly; I presented my ideas to the board and within a couple of days the idea in the garden had become a reality in my life.
I am convinced that this blog I began in December has helped guide me. I have taken more time to be in nature and to write and that has led to heightened intuition, increased trust in the rhythm of life and the process of growth. I used to yank plants out when they died back in winter because I didn't understand that they'd come back in the spring. I bought the bigger, more expensive plants because I didn't trust that with a little patience and care I could grow that same thing from a tiny little seedling that cost a fraction of the price.
I know that my new trial position with Swan Songs will evolve at its own pace. If it's growing too fast for me, I'll prune it back a little or turn it over to another gardener. If it's thriving and I love what I'm doing I'll build an arbor in my life to support it. If I'm not sure which way to turn, I'll put on my green gardening gloves, baseball cap, overalls and blue rubber boots, get down on my knees close to the earth and see what the fairies have to say.
Almost three weeks since I last wrote. What's up with that? I am finding it incredibly difficult to fulfill my vision of gardening and writing everyday. Perhaps it's because it is 95 degrees out there. When I wait until it cools off a bit in the evening, I get eaten alive by the pests that are waiting to devour my exposed ankles!
Mostly I am tired. I'll admit it - uninspired. Our property takes so much effort just to maintain that I get worn out doing the mundane - like mowing (we now have three broken mowers, two of which are in the shop.) I was out there enthusiastically giving our unruly yard a haircut when I hit a rock and stopped the whole deal - bent the frame on the mower and did some kind of damage to the engine. And that was our really good mower that we brought over from the studio. The bamboo that David and I have worked so hard to clear is back, but at least it covers up the piles of bamboo roots that I still hadn't gotten rid of. Still it's disheartening and makes me come down with a bad case of "why bother". I'll just let the bamboo win for awhile.
What we need is a back yard make-over like you see on HGTV where they come in with heavy machinery, scoop the whole thing out and bring us a few tons of fresh dirt. The problem is that they always preface those shows with a woman's cheery voice saying "The Gages had a budget of $30,000 to work with for their backyard makeover." Hmmm..."The Gages have a good friend, some blue rubber boots from Target and a nice new edger to transform their backyard" - thus the "why bother" attitude.
I bother because I am thrilled when I pop a cherry tomato in my mouth from one of our plants; I'm tickled to run out to the garden and pinch off a bit of basil for our pasta sauce; I'm proud that the plants I put in a month ago seem to be thriving and taking to their new home; I love to see butterflies swarming around my perennials.
I'm trying to learn to appreciate the small victories and the simpler pleasures - both in the garden and in my life. When I feel overrun by the big bad bamboo, I turn my eyes to a quieter corner, untouched by its relentless aggression. With a little effort I can almost forget that it's there.
Five weeks since my last post. Five weeks of nurturing my family instead of my garden. I left for Florida a few days after I wrote last and began the process of helping my parents move across the state to live with my older sister and her husband. I have spent 3 of the last five weeks there and in between I have tried to keep up with our world here in Austin.
I did manage to plant a rock rose, dwarf pomegranate, African iris, wheelbarrow full of herbs, four o'clocks, beets, batchelor buttons, and some pansies for color in the last few weeks. Chris kept them watered and alive while I organized and packed and moved my folks and their life's possessions. Thank God for sisters - we grew up being a team when it was time for chores around the house, and the training paid off in spades this month!
Not all the digging and pulling at the roots of our family was painless. Along the way I had a serious falling out with someone I have been close to my entire lifetime. I am left with a huge hole where a relationship used to be. Today I was incapcitated by a migraine as I played the drama over and over in my head. I finally got up and went to the garden. I stood and watered - that's about all I had the energy for. But as I watered the new plants that are fighting to stake their ground in our garden, I watered the little seed of possibility in my self. The possibility that this relationship has been dysfunctional for a long time and needed to be planted in a new place in my heart. Or maybe it needed to be pulled out and put in a dark corner for awhile, to be rooted again when the time is right. Or maybe it will never be in my heart's landscape again and I will someday plant something else there that will bear fruit and flowers and attract the hum of life.
A few days ago after my prayer and meditation time, I chose a “Medicine Card” to glean some wisdom or guidance about how to make my peace with this very disturbing event in my life. The “medicine” here refers to “anything that improves one’s connection to the Great Mystery and to all life.” It is based on Native American spirituality and I have always found the appropriateness of the “animal medicine” cards I choose uncanny and helpful.
My choice on this day was “Turtle”. “Like Turtle, you also have shields that protect you from hurt, envy, jealousy, and the unconsciousness of others….If you have chosen the Turtle symbol, you are being asked to honor the creative source within you, to be grounded to the Earth, and to observe your situation with motherly compassion. Use the water and earth energies, which represent Turtle’s two homes, to flow harmoniously with your situation and to place your feet firmly on the ground in a power stance.”
So I guess standing shell shocked with the hose in the garden was the right thing to do. It was certainly the only thing I could do today. Thank you Mother Earth. It worked better than the migraine medicine.
It seems like the only thing I am growing lately is frustration. My edger was in pieces so I finally went and purchased a snazzy new Black and Decker model. It's one of those string edgers and this one actually has two lines. So, that makes twice as many lines not functioning right. Twice as many spools to mess with. Twice as many reasons for me to pull my hair out and give up. I don't know why I can't grok how these things work. Maybe it's an inherent design flaw - either in the equipment or my brain.
Our good friend Cat generously gave us a new mower that she had never taken out of the box. I made a trip to the gas station for gas and oil and tried to crank it up. No go. I don't think it's the actual mower, I just have a hard time getting those things running. I guess I don't have the upper body strength so once again I gave up and came inside to get back to work in the office. I was outside for an hour feebly attempting to get my tools functioning and was left with an empty pit of frustration and a yard that is badly in need of a haircut.
Yesterday I spent all my outdoor time digging more weeds and cutting back bamboo. The work that we are doing to contain the bamboo brigade back there is obviously energizing the troops. For every 25 feet of bamboo roots that David digs out, 25 more shoots appear. You can almost hear them taunting us - "Really? You think you can get rid of us by pulling up a few of our roots? We are thousands strong down here in the trenches and when you attack one of our comrades we will not stand for it. We will rise in force".
I usually pride myself on the fact that we don't have a picture perfect suburban lawn. Today I'd give anything for a tame little patch of green with some neat flower beds to tend to. I feel like I never get to the pretty stuff - you know, the image of the gardener with her straw sun hat, pink gloves, quietly pruning her roses while sipping on iced tea. I'm always traipsing around with chain saws and oil cans and huge bags of thistles, oak and bamboo - just trying to carve out my place amongst the powerful life forces around me.
My entire life feels a little like that right now. I'm constantly scrambling to keep up with demands from all directions - many of which are out of my control and just part of life. I still have this attachment to the fallacy that if I work hard enough I should be able to tame the wildness and end up with perfect roses. Sometimes you have to slog through the underbrush to get to the rosebush. I guess that's what I'm doing these days.
It's pouring outside. In between rain showers I have been running out and pulling weeds because it's so much more satisfying and productive when the ground is wet. I don't know why there are so many weeds this year but my grass is having to compete for its turf, so to speak. Of course, I avoided using chemicals to weed and feed so I guess that explains why I have a lawn that consists of 80% dandelions, clover, chickweed and poison ivy, 10% dirt and 10% unruly, spindly patches of grass. It's hard to get motivated to crank up the mower when there's so little actual lawn. Also, our mower and edger are not functioning right now, so it involves driving to our studio to get the other mower. That's way more commitment than I have been able to muster. For a gardening blogger it's pretty embarrassing how unattractive our yard is.
I came home from a week in California to a heavy layer of oak leaves and pollen covering everything. Every April we go through the oak barrage and our sinuses tell the tale. This year we hired a friend to rake and sweep and bag and get it out of our life. It's not a super hard job, but for a couple of singers it's worth having someone else spare us the five hours of inhaling the vocal poison. Now at least I can walk outside without going into an asthma attack. Of course there's rain in the forecast for the next several days, but the negative ions that it is stirring are already working their magic on my mood. I don't have to find my headphones to listen to the rain app on my iphone to chill out. I just open the door. What a novel concept.
I'm home for another ten days before I leave for Florida to visit my parents for several days and play in Louisiana on my way back to Texas. By the time I leave I'd like to have some hanging baskets of colorful flowers, the tomatoes planted, beds mulched, piles of bamboo roots that my pal David has been digging up disposed of (that's a whole other story - waking up to David in his Gilligan cap hacking away at the bamboo in the backyard) and the beginnings of a new bed in front of my office window. We'll see. That's my wish list so I'll just keep chipping away at it. Throughout this process I am challenging myself to not pass judgment when the demands of our life pull me away from my plans and goals. For a list maker that's a hard one.
But what a sweet sense of accomplishment as I watch my new grapevine take root and start to reach up towards our first bottle of MoonHouse Wine. I can dream can't I? Just don't hold me to it.
Almost three weeks since my last post. In spite of my best intentions life keeps intruding on my gardening and writing time. An unexpected trip to South Dakota to help my mother in law, Darleen, move into an assisted living facility pulled me away from my normal life for awhile and today I leave for Los Angeles to attend four days of meetings. During the week I was "home" I was out of town four nights. As you can see, I do not lead a life conducive to a daily routine revolving around the home turf.
I have managed to plant carrots, beets, blackberries, grapes, four o'clock flowers and bachelor buttons. I've pulled piles and piles of weeds and am trying to keep up with the barrage of oak leaves covering our world. Now the yellow/green dust is raining down on our cars, driveway, porch and kitty, who looks like she is wearing little green booties.
As we drove home from east Texas yesterday we couldn't resist pulling over for a classic bluebonnets shot, so I am getting doses of Mother Earth even if it isn't in my own backyard. The soft plains and hills of South Dakota also brought me comfort during a trying time. I'll try to walk on the beach in LA for a few minutes, although I'll be in hotels and meeting rooms most of the time.
When I return to Texas spring will still be in full bloom and my weary body will be ready to rest and rejuvenate by digging and planting and enjoying the fruits of my labor.
I am a woman who is very easily entertained these days. As I blissfully loaded 10 bags of garden soil into our truck recently I realized that at the age of 24 I would not have found joy in that moment. I probably wouldn't have created that moment.
At that time I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and I didn't even give my brown thumb an opportunity to prove itself. I knew it was brown and my house plants agreed. The high desert around me was lush and colorful in its own way and that was plenty of landscape for me. I did spend time outside - traipsing through the mountains to cut the winter's wood supply, running in my slippers out to the wood pile so I could keep the woodstove cooking, riding horses on my friend's ranch and sitting in the sun playing my guitar. Living in Santa Fe, you can't be surrounded by that much natural beauty and not feel connected to it. Thanks to the Sangre de Cristos, the sky, the smell of pinon and the clarity of the light, being close to nature came easy.
These days in Austin I am also surrounded by natural beauty, but it is often overpowered by traffic, people, high rises and highways. I have to make an extra effort to drink in the nectar of life in its many disguises. Loading all those bags of dirt I know that soon I will be tearing in to them and adding the rich mixture to my gardens and flower beds. I know that I will inhale its dampness and perhaps hear a redbird trilling on the telephone wire above me; I will notice a worm and wonder if it was a bonus prize in the dirt I just purchased or if he had been napping deep in the soil that I am now ferociously turning; I will feel a shift in the wind and a shower of tough, brown oak leaves will rain down on me.
Investing in ten bags of dirt is a confirmation that this work that I love is in my future. I am 54 and it turns out all that talk about menopause ushering in a new way of being and a rearranging of priorities is absolutely true. The young woman with the brown thumb would be stunned to see the simple pleasures that I now yearn for. But the little girl of 4 who loved to romp through meadows and lay in piles of hay probably wouldn't be all that surprised.
