Category Archives: Life at Home

Hovering at Half-Mast

06 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Far Away Places, Home Restoration, Life at Home, Soul Care

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On the road to Utah

As morning temperatures hover at half-mast of summer’s high, I’m wondering how we’ll remember this hottest season on record.

Will it be for the sixty-five days of triple digit temperatures endured since June?  The crop failures?  The cost of hay this fall?  The lawns that look like hay?  The water rationing and surprise visits of city auditors — to ensure we play by the rules?

Or will it be something of a personal nature, hitting closer to the heart?

I imagine the year’s extreme weather patterns will serve as mere backdrop for me, given the upheaval from changing residences.  All the accompanying renovation work, both inside and out, would be a worthy contender for defining this summer — were it not for other half-mast matters closer to life’s quick.

Do I write of them?  No, better not.  Best to skate across their surface and leave them undisturbed.

Needing a change of scenery, we got away last week, though not to either of our original  destinations.  About this time last year we booked a Mediterranean cruise.  Then there was that vacation I dreamed of last autumn and into winter, which would have whisked us to upstate New York — the place of my father’s birth — and to Vermont, where I had just discovered three eighty-something year old cousins.

Interesting how plans — and even people — can shrink and stretch in importance, as we wear out our days on earth.

Without so much as a backward glance, I tossed Greece aside when we purchased this new house, while the trip to New England lost gas as it drew near for take off.  And when it came time to commit, the only vacation I really wanted to take was to Utah, to visit my father’s only sister.

I told my brother in July I had a hankering to see her one more time.  But it was more than that.  Way more — since some mysterious something was urging me toward Utah. One minute I had no desire to go.  And in the next, I was calling Sis and asking her to come with me.  Then asking my husband if he’d like to go too.  And when they both said yes, I called Aunt Carol.  And then before another dream vacation could die stillborn, I shored it up with seven nights of non-refundable accommodations.

This hurried response was born out of ignoring two similar calls before.  The first, four years ago, came the weekend before Mom’s unrecoverable stroke.  Out of the blue, I began to feel uneasy, began sensing a mysterious urge to drop everything to go see her.  But rather than give into the unexplainable, I pushed back with rationalization.  Then, three years later it happened again.   I felt a pull to visit Aunt Jo, a few weeks before her death.  As I drove by her house without stopping.  I had no desire to ignore this thing a third time.  And though it had been years since I’d seen Aunt Carol — until last week, almost a biblical forty — I had to go and see her, even at the risk of a little awkwardness.

Yet, how comforting and safe it feels when we’re around those who’ve loved us from birth.  For in spite of its eternal nature, there’s a tenderness about their love; no matter how many times we fail at life, no matter how long the separation, their love of us endures without judgment.    

On the night of our arrival, she welcomed us with a home cooked meal.  When it came time to leave, she asked us to stay ‘one more day.’  As for the not-so-gooey middle, we filled our visit with stories and photos.  Old ones.  New ones.  Hers.  Ours.  Funny ones, sad ones.  The three days together made the years apart  unimportant — and the visit unforgettable.

Of course, Aunt Carol was far from hovering at half-mast as I feared.  So who knows where that urge to go see her came from or what it was about?   Because she looked good.  She looked happy even, in spite of  many, many reasons not to be.

And what’s more, since coming home, I’m begun to feel a little more like myself — in spite of those few unmentionables flapping in the wind.      

Wishing Wells in the Garden

31 Sunday Jul 2011

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

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It was just Fourth of July, wasn’t it?  That’s what I tell myself — even though tomorrow is obviously August and my new kitchen is almost done and my new gigantic garden plots are well on their way to being ready for fall planting.  What’s obvious is that everyday life has been everywhere but here.

Yet — before July 2011 is all used up — I’ll mark these few words in the sand.  Because I wish to remember how lovely this fifty-fifth summer of life has been.  I want to remember the way I wake up each morning with boundless energy and excitement, the way I jump into work clothes then rush toward the utility room with a parade of hungry canines in my wake.  And with dogs fed, how I down a  quick cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal while checking the latest scorching weather forecast before hurrying outside to find shovel and wagon before the day grows hotter than any Oklahoma summer has a right to be.

It has felt good to be outside, especially in the soft morning light.  As I’ve worked, neighbors have called out greetings as they pass by jogging or walking — with or without a dog.  Some offer encouraging words.  Surely a few think I’m crazy to be putting in new garden beds — measuring one-fourth the size of our front lawn — in the midst of severe drought conditions.   And if so, who could argue with their logic?

I confess to feeling foolish at times, as sweat drips down my face to mix with dirt, wondering if this is how Noah felt when building his Ark with no rain clouds in sight. But, foolish or not, I dig until I can dig no more.  Three hours.  Sometimes five, if the day is overcast  — or if I’m lucky to land in a shadier part of the garden.

Gardening is an act of faith, as much as going to church, I suppose.  Though sometimes it’s less.  Sometimes it’s nothing more than a wishing well when — down on dirty knees in the hard-baked soil — my mind wanders to my writing and this blog — and to thoughts of how I’m allowing  both to wither on the vine without attention — only to console myself in my next thought that I’ll write later — in the comfort of an air-conditioned afternoon.  But then I don’t.  Or how — usually on Mondays, when I hear church bells ringing nearby, I tell myself I’ll find a good church soon — one interested in teaching a life in holiness — and that I’ll go next Sunday.  Yes I will.  But then I don’t.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we actually did all those things we tell ourselves we’ll do?  Other times I wonder what would become of us if we didn’t tell these things to ourselves?   Perhaps we couldn’t live in peace without our daily ration of feel-good, well-wishes.  Can you imagine living a life without hope — of a better day or a better you?

All I know is that July will soon be over and it feels good to have ended it with a few written words — to know I’ve made good on at least one of my well-wishes in the garden.  Still.  I can’t walk away from July without closing my eyes and throwing in two more cents:  If wishes were negotiable, I’d  be willing to trade my little writing feel-good away for a good amount of rain.  Yes I would.

Something less than Noah’s would be great.

A Garden Legacy

26 Sunday Jun 2011

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

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Truth be told, acquiring a garden in need —  on a lot twice our slice of Mesta Park  — was part of the charm of this new place we’re calling home.

Too bad I failed to recall how gardening in unamended red dirt is like childbirth; the pain of bringing forth new life in Mesta Park — of amending red clay with compost and peat moss to a twelve-inch depth were memories I forgot too soon, covered up as they were, by three years of keeping company with jaunty faces of thriving plants.

But these gardens do offer consolation — especially with all the hard-scape left behind.  Our large stone patio —  a perfect perch to watch the morning sun rise above the trees — along with ground-level curbing that outlines the perimeter of our backyard fence gardens will someday, when time and weather become more spacious and inviting, become lovely bones to build new gardens around.

Most mornings I’m out back  — in an effort to restore order — before the heat comes.  Working my way around the gardens counterclockwise, I began with the east garden, though I’ve spent more time on the north, where lined up like soldiers, are twelve troops of Crape Myrtles that two weeks ago, were a mass of tangled branches, dead and alive, surrounded by waist-high weeds.  Parasitic vines covered two.  With neither strength nor tools to do more than scratch the surface of the soil around them — three inches is deep in these conditions  — I’ve removed most weeds and vines and reformed the shrubs into the shape of their species.

While my garden legacy is a byproduct of neglect and drought, made worse by a home unoccupied many months, every garden holds hidden joys waiting for notice.  The week before we moved in I noticed my first in a small stand of Hollyhocks blooming on the east side of our property, growing appropriately along an old chain-link fence.  I saw them when beginning to weed out space for the few transplants I brought with me from Mesta Park.

Every morning I watered the Hollyhocks, alongside thirsty transplants —  a few sprigs of Blue-Black Salvia and Russian Sage and a small crop of inch-high Cleome — that rewarded my care, by shriveling up and laying their heads on hot cracked soil.  Had it not been for the Hollyhocks, blooming their long necks off, I may have given up on those transplants, for I felt a mite foolish watering plants which looked dead to the eye.  But underneath there was life and all but a few have survived.  Looking back, I now see the transplants  had only let go of their surface looks to focus energy on rebuilding hidden roots, to regain their balance in soil different than they were accustom.

As I watered, I wondered who to thank for my favorite of all cottage flowers.  I began with my new neighbor — the one who putters around in his own garden with such daily discipline — but he quickly told me the Hollyhocks that we both enjoy came from Marguerite, who lived in the next house east to him.  In her nineties, Marguerite  was one of the few original homeowners left in the neighborhood; when I expressed interest in writing her a note of thanks, my neighbor shared she was under around-the-clock care of others, hinting she was likely in a place beyond reach of any words I might care to write.

Yet the thought of thanking Marguerite did not go away.  I thought of her again as I watered the Hollyhocks a few days ago, which now are mostly spent; though in their place are a few feathery seedlings that have sprung up which surely must be Cosmos.  If so, could these too  have come from Marguerite’s, since Cosmos are so often companions to Hollyhocks.  How many years had these seeds laid beneath the surface, waiting for conditions to ripen?

The question was enough to move me to my computer, to look up the spelling of Marguerite’s name on local property tax records.  One research led to another, and possibly to another, before I uncovered Marguerite’s recent obituary.  She had died late February without our mutual neighbor’s notice.  The news stunned me.  It made me sad —  on more than one level.  But as I began to get my roots about me, I saw how Marguerite, at least to my way of thinking, was not beyond words of gratitude at all; that I can remember Marguerite with a grateful heart, anytime I water my east garden.  And maybe even here, with these few words I’m scattering in digital space.

It’s enough, these words of mine.  I’ll spread no other about Marguerite’s passing, across the fence or anywhere else; surely the neighbors will find out when the time is ripe.