Category Archives: In the Garden

Everyday Frittering

17 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Home Restoration, In the Garden, Life at Home, Writing

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, ,

“How was your day?”

This question my husband asks is the most everyday part of my everyday.  With it, he invites me to punctuate the hours with a label.  Good or bad.  Busy or lazy.  Sometimes with an exclamation point or two.

But last Monday, rather than responding with the usual ‘good’ and almost always, ‘busy,’ I allowed frustration to have its say.   For surely it was frustration and a series of sleepless nights which made me respond that I was frittering my life away.  You know, a little time here.  A little there.  With nothing much to show for it.

Because everything inches along in my everyday life, in stacks of varying states of “to do,”  without anything ever getting done.

First, the garden.  Never ending.  As I like it.

Then, my home improvement du jour.  Never ending.  As I like it.

Ta-da, my work on Dad’s story. Never ending.  Not at all as I like it.

In truth, I am overwhelmed by that story of my father’s growing up years.  And as much as I wish to work on it, —  or wish to wish —  I fear it’s too much.  And I wonder if Dad’s story isn’t the biggest time-fritter of all —  what with research and re-reading of notes and just THINKING about all those stories floating around without a timeline and gleaning perspectives from others.  It’s exhausting without being exhaustive.  Black holes.  Galore.  My ghostly subjects move all across the map like they are running from the law.  Or from me.

Of course, sometimes they did.  Run from the law, that is.  At least, my grandfather did.  It was part of his ‘get rich-quick-and-easy scheme’  that didn’t pan out.  You know that phrase — crime doesn’t pay — well, it could have been coined by all of my grandfather’s hard-working Greek cousins and uncles who got rich the hardworking way — when talking about my grandfather behind his back.

Have I mentioned — somewhere along the way — that my grandfather did a little moonlighting for the Mafia in the twenties and thirties?  Probably not.  It doesn’t come up too often in conversation.

Anyway, since last Monday, I’ve put Dad’s story on the back burner — to get a few things done.  I guess I had need to point to a few dead and done bodies.  I began by laying my first ever flagstone path … which I’ve thought about all the warm winter long — and found it to be much like putting together puzzle pieces of a different kind.

Then, I got my hands dirty in my new herb garden that once, not so long ago, was the concrete pad of the previous owner’s jacuzzi.  Then, since I’m a gambling gardener —

rather than one who plays in the dirt safe — I planted five tomato plants three weeks before the official planting date — my shy way of living on the edge.  I think they’ll be okay.  Especially since my sister said that our mother said that Granny always said that the danger of frost is over once the Elm trees leaf out — which mine did earlier this week. (Sis shared this bit of gardening wisdom with me while we were painting her bedroom a lovely Carribean blue yesterday and today.)

So here’s the crazy thing.  Six years ago, I would never have imagined that I could have done any of these things I did so handily this week.  Flagstone paths?  Garden designs that required the breaking out of a six inch concrete pad?  Painting crisp, clean lines free-hand at the request of others?

So maybe, if I keep frittering away at Daddy’s story… a little time here, a little there, with a whole lot of living on the edge, it will all come together.  Somehow.  Someday.  So help me God.

Yep.  It could happen.

Someday

04 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, ,

Surely the pendulum of autumn is swinging toward winter, as I woke this morning to find my back garden frosty — the first time this fall.

The patio appears bare without orange and lemon trees.  Favored, for sure, since they spent the night indoors with their lime tree cousins.   But those other tropicals of mine?   Well, I left the Tacoma to fend life for itself — unprotected.  While without my husband’s presence, the best I could do for  two hulking Hibiscus was to huddle them together with a few other tender perennials —  invited only because they parked their pots in the right  spot — under layers of great-grandma’s quilts and a paint tarp.

I hope they made it.  Well, most of me hopes they made it.   The pendulum swings back and forth on whether their summer beauty is worth the price of five months in the house looking — well, to be kind —  less than their dress-for-success best.

Meanwhile, on the warm side of the window, I’m waiting inside.   It’s a luxury to do so, to not have to venture out on a cold morning like today  — to  warm-up my car, to dress myself in warm clothes, to wait for the car heater to work its toasty magic — as I did  in my twenties and thirties and more than half my forties.  How many times did I tell myself on those drives into school or work that someday — that someday, I would choose when to go out and stay in — that someday, I wouldn’t  live life to suit other people’s needs and wishes and clocks —  that someday I could keep time and spend it as I chose.

Well, so far, with only two out of three, someday hadn’t arrived in full.   But the rest of my someday will surely follow.

Not today, of course.  Because today I’ve got to move an orange and lemon tree outdoors and I’ve got to lift off the quilts and tarp to see how yesterday’s choices fared.  And I’ve got to spread mulch.  And time permitting, amend soil in the east garden that’s close to being done.

Yep — even though it’s still cold, I need to venture outside and work the garden.

And yep — I sure like  the sounds of hearing ‘someday.’  Why talking about ‘someday’ makes me think I have all the time in the world.  And then some.  In spite of that pendulum swinging toward winter.

Odd One Out

27 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

It feels odd to be out of the garden today — and for rain to be there in my stead.  Gentle.  And steady — as if we weren’t deep in the midst of a year-long drought.  The very one – if weather fortune-teller predictions come true — that will continue through winter.

I brought the key limes in last night for the second time this season.  Temperatures fell below forty-eight degrees — and what is mild conditions for most is hostile to these thin-skinned trees; no use telling them tonight’s forecast is mid-thirties since forty-eight or thirty-eight spells the same dire end — and what are a few degrees anyway, since they’ve been saved from Jack’s frosty fingers of death.  The sad truth is that they will never outgrow their need for saving.  That come cold weather, they will always need a helping hand to stay alive.  No matter how big they get.

Being in retreat and offering retreat to frigid lime trees from the very place that has been my retreat seems — in the spirit of the day — odd.  Because, for better or worse  the garden has been my private escape-hatch when too much about everyday life has felt hostile; family feuds here and there, that few (if any) could explain to outsiders.  Even those mired in the moment and history of the relationship find it a mystery.

On one side of the tree I’ve observed hot anger take flight in hateful words launched as deadly cruise missiles — while on the other I’ve observed the cutting of life ties from a surreal silence, the barest of words offered between two at odds.  Was the first rooted in jealousy over the attention of a dying loved one, as some have said?  And can it be the second began in forgotten cupcakes for a birthday party?  Oh, who but God knows?  All I know, is that after months of hurt, it’s probably good that some things remain a mystery.  Because what if it was really about forgotten cupcakes?

All this brings to mind a Robert Frost poem I first ran across in college that I didn’t then understand.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Does anyone need to hear that I “get” the poem very well these days?

And does anyone find irony in that this truth was written by a poet named “frost.”

Of course, life is full of ironies.  Life is full of finding truth in odd places — like retreating from a retreat to stay alive, as in the case of my too-big-for-their-pots lime trees.  And two, that a family feud is never just about two at odds, because it ripples out like a whirlpool to catch those beyond its edge in its spiral, so that everyone at family gatherings walks on egg shells, doing their darned best to pretend all is well when it’s not.  And three, that it’s not just lime trees that are too thin-skinned and in need of saving from the hostile conditions they find themselves in.  And that few, if any, choose to jump into the midst of their squabble — perhaps out of good intentions, they see it as none of their business — yet, why is it, that even now,  I hear these words of Jesus’ that beg otherwise: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Did I just play the Jesus card?  Well, I suppose those Southern Baptist roots are still down there under the soil somewhere.  But if my words feel blunt, they hold no anger.  If anything, I’m only weary.  And oddly enough I’m grateful too — for the silver lining that’s come with this round of rain clouds — both the life lessons learned and the joy experienced in watching the beauty of the garden unearth from hard clay.

Sometimes I wonder if the size of my garden grew in proportion to the size of my sorrow.  Had my year been happier, would my garden have been smaller?  What I know for sure is that the garden has had her way of reducing me to size:  after a day of gardening I know the world doesn’t revolve around me and petty arguments and that some day, we’ll both be reduced to a speck of dirt.

In spite of disrupting my too-much-to-get-done tight garden schedule, today’s rain  — along with this outpouring — is a welcomed relief.  I pray it’s not temporary.