Moving Heavens & Good Earth

The ridiculous & the sublime were well represented today. I did my usual after work mambo--changed into my play clothes, one of the tennis outfits D used to call my 'cheerleading ensems,' grabbed my scoop of black beans & glass of lime water, sat out back & read 2 chapters before choosing tonight's yard project & plunging in.  

Note:  If you start umpteen million projects simultaneously, you always have something different to turn to when you are suffering from lack of momentum in any quadrant. At least that's what I tell myself.

So tonight I wanted to move the compost bin to a less visible area, because though I love it with every waking fiber (& peel, shell & skin), I don't expect everyone to get it. The bin, like a lot of nifty things came with the house. So for 8 years with me & who knows how many before that, all the uber rich nutrients from every peel, eggshell & let's be honest--a LOT of coffee grounds has leeched into the ground under it. My version of sacred ground, which, once I pulled up & rolled the bin downslope to the new locale was so fine & rich it resembled instant espresso powder. There is a 2' diameter circle of it where I will plant something really special. 

After that I shoveled gravel & quarry dust awhile, & came in to watch Scandal on Netflix & do laundry. 

But the best part of every evening comes after yard work, after TV, yoga, clean up, etc.  just before sleep I go back out, lie down & look up. By this point it is anytime between midnight & 2 am & most neighbors have doused their lights & turned in, leaving the stars very little competition.  

I don't catalog what I'm looking at, just enjoy the calm reliability of their presence. Bat trails zip between the fruit trees, slicing the milky way above.  And the stars just are. A cosmic nightlight before bed. Good night!

Good Garden Ghosts

First let me say that I do not, repeat NOT believe in ghosts. But I absolutely & unequivocably believe my garden is haunted.

(Birth announcement--pineapple start up!)

In a good way. Not the 'Rosemary's Baby,' 'Poltergeist' kind of way. 

I believe it is haunted by Gardens past, and by the gardeners who planted & tended them.

Every time I use my 'hoe hand' (a handle-less hoe that is a very useful broken thing--patent pending) to slash open yet another bag of soil, that scent brings back the digging of beds all the way back to a rock-infested  hillside in West Virginia, or earlier still to pulling potatoes with my Grandpa, walking his sidling, bow-legged gait a few steps ahead, turning the hill & pointing with his pitch fork at the X where I'd find our quarry. Or years later, whining at Mom's insistence that we pull as many rocks from the planting bed as possible, & still growing lightning bolt-shaped carrots that had to expand laterally when they ran into one of the rocks this slacker had left in their path.  

(Once you embrace rocks in the garden, it can get completely outta hand)

It was the same scent when I brought home paper grocery bags full of assorted daffodil bulbs & iris rhizomes from the summer horticulture course at Mary Baldwin in VA, planting them in the former carrot bolt bed. It was almost worth living at home & going to my hometown university to see all those spring bloomers, blanketing the hillside.  

When I got married in my first year of college (& divorced before I graduated, thus erasing it from my permanent record) & we bought that little house with its communal driveway & pointy closets under the eaves, I grew big feathery dill & little red marbles of new potatoes, a combo so delicious they are permanently committed to taste memory. 

(From potatoes to pineapples in 2 gardening generations)

The loamy scent followed me when I planted bells of Ireland, their tall, alien-green spires filling the window boxes on the tiny cottage I rented as a new (and newly divorced) career girl in Maryland, in that odd place called Epping Forest. The cottage was so tiny & the window boxes so full, it appeared it would roll over at any moment. 

A few years later I was up to my elbows in peat, mulch & herbs, planting the border with those & teddy bear sunflowers at the even smaller cottage my second husband & I rented on a creek in Mayo MD. Two mallards (Phil & Don, the eiderdown brothers) insisted on nesting in my sage, giving my admonishments that they'd better stop pre-seasoning themselves lest they become dinner, as much credence as they warranted--exactly zero. A young brown rabbit I named Bertie lived in those borders too, & became so tame he would approach to within a few inches when I would lie flat in the grass & tell him nonsense in chummy, low tones. 

The rocks & caliches won out in my first attempt at tropical gardening, a few years later up on Scenic Drive here in STX. The only victories there were the few things I grew in pots, arranged on the terraced stone walls I patched together from all the blasted rocks. That lemonade-from-lemons trick mom taught me is one I still use today, having finally embraced the rocks as a necessary & useful part of sloped gardening. 

When I dig into my yard after work today, the scent will be the same. Only the memories differ. Now I hear David laughing at my crazy garden schemes, at my choice of bright, Kate Spade-esque colors, at how much I overbought on magenta spray paint. His orchids, my orchids, & the ones we bought together are tied in trees all around me, most at heights so low he'd definitely make fun.  

(One of the orchids D tied in my trees himself, assuring it is at an acceptable height)

He'd probably scoff, too at my thinly veiled attempts to attach the weight & permanence of stone to this transient place, a tropical island in a hurricane belt.  But he'd secretly like that I keep trying. Don Quixote with a hoe hand, that's me.  

I think a fig tree will look great over there...(Hush, David!  I will too water it!)

 

(Palomitas or 'little dove' orchids, named for the bud shape)

Paradise Puzzling

Paradise Puzzling

Every day this week as I round the corner at the Kingshill PO, on the sidewalk I've seen a 3" square cardboard puzzle piece. I'm either looking at the back of it or it is blank, waiting for someone to project whatever they believe is missing before attempting to jimmy it into their already full life.  Pardon the metaphorical extrapolation--I'm sure I'm just seeing the back side.  

Two things are obvious:

 This object has set my mental gears to whirring & grinding, &

They must never sweep the sidewalk at the Post Office. 

Not packing a broom (though I do keep trash bags in my car when I'm beaching it daily, to do a quick pick up before my swim), I'm left with grinding gears. For mental exercise I've been thinking of what that missing puzzle piece might be for me.  

First I tried assessing the question from an outsider's perspective. Looking out-to-in, what appears to be missing?

I suppose relationships would be the obvious answer?  Yes I have an amazing Mom (who I wish I saw much more, but she is happy & healthy where she is & we communicate by some means everyday, so I'm  not too troubled by the distance between)  & wonderful friends, but when I lock my door at night there are six feet & 2 snores on the inside. Actually, Mu doesn't snore. So 6 feet (4 of which are ridiculously furry) & 1 snore inside. That hasn't always been the count, & higher foot-count years were definitely not all bad.  But for now, 6 feet & no longing for more, at least not by me. You can ask Mu yourself. 

So if not people, how about things & stuff?  Shiny stuff. New & pretty stuff....

NOPE. Lately I'm on a two-pronged mission regarding possessions & spaces. We're still at that luxurious place when the ship-less summer stretches long & languid ahead. My natural bent is to believe I'll have time to accomplish many projects, as I've mentioned in previous posts. This year I'm trying on a 'design-for-use' theme instead. Economize & mobilize to utilize is my new mantra (don't think that's ever going to catch on, but so be it).  

The 'Lawn-to Living Space' goals are a good example. Despite all the fruit trees, the pineapple beds & the orchids, I still have a lot of sloping lawn...that while I don't water still sucks up some resources in the form of having to hire bush whacking guys to mow & trim.  When I bought Mumuland in 2008 I knew I wouldn't have 1/2 acre of rolling grass lawn. Not my goal--not my thing.

 I wanted the large lot either to build or to grow. Six feet & one snore don't really merit a build in the classic definition, so grow it is.  The back yard has evolved into a growing build or a building grow, depending on perspective. And evolved is the right choice of word. 

I took horticulture one summer at Mary Baldwin College in Stanton, VA, so I know how to make a garden plan, in color & to scale, with legends & everything.  I like garden plans.  I admire their tidy ambitions.  I just never follow them. I could, but I rebel at a piece of paper with a plastic overlay bossing me around. 

Instead, I love fecund, messy, spilling-full gardens with surprises.  Don't show me everything at once.  Let me explore. Give me places to watch the stars...to drink my morning coffee or have my evening meal...to be well-hidden enough to get completely lost in a book...or find myself in music...to watch happy Mu chase lizards. 

And it's working. Right now I'm sitting out in the startlingly bright moonlight, listening to the 'plooking' frog sounds, drinking iced coffee & dreaming what the next secret garden area will be like.  Will the sound of large cardboard-textured palm fronds clatter overhead?  Will I finally find the perfect clappers for my little cast iron wren-shaped bells & hear their faint chimes?  Perhaps the breeze will carry the fragrance of sun-warmed rosemary, or heady night blooming cereus, or an unassuming looking, but delicately scented orchid.  

Seems the puzzle piece wasn't for me. I'm not lacking anything, just happy working the puzzle. And blowing bubbles for Mu to chase in the moonlight.  Goodnight!

Back Away From the Chicken Wire!

Tell me if this has ever happened to you:

It's 1am & you are standing on your sofa wagging a yardstick over your head, trying to push an electric cord into a ceiling hook.  Success! And then you realize two uncomfortable truths--

1.  The light fixture (being generous here) you just finished fashioning from a scratched sickly-green cutting board, greener chicken wire, & an IKEA hanging lamp kit possesses not one appealing feature or redeeming quality. It is, without a doubt, the fugliest such thing anyone has ever conceived of or executed. And

2.  You were in full, goldfish bowl-glorious view of the entire neighborhood while performing this unbalanced act because you're too lazy to drop the shades (a better DIY project from awhile back). 

Seriously awful DIY must be a lot like waking up next to a post-tequila epic mistake. There is no graceful exit. Just find your crumpled DIY undies, tuck your shoes under your arm, & back quietly & slowly out of the room.  In the case of a failed project, I'd also suggest dismantling it & hiding the components before you go to sleep. 

Nothing is to be gained by being accosted by your errors in judgment first thing in the morning.  And believe me, I'm talking about the 'lamp' here. Good night!! :)

How to Get There From Here?

Friday, May 13, 2016

On Creative Visualization, Completion Anxiety, & Powering on Through

Aka How to Get There from Here. 

"You don't owe anyone anything."  -Mom

"I can do anything I want or imagine.  It will have consequences.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing."  -me

'The task before us will be hard.  Then we will do that which is hard.' - possibly me, paraphrasing fictional President Bartlett, paraphrasing JFK?

When I first heard of self-sabotage, I thought, 'this is really a thing?'

Oh yea.  It's a thing. 

When I started work on the natural stone patio (107 years ago), I had energy & enthusiasm, some methods research under my belt, & most of a plan.   Aha!  You've no doubt seized upon the problem.  Half-baked?  That's me.  Ok, more like 3/4 baked...or maybe even 7/8 baked. Can we just agree not fully baked, & fractions be damned?  

It turns out unlike 99% of Americans & 110% of HGTV viewers, I don't like to see the end, the result, the reveal.  I like the process, the middle, the nittiest part of the gritty.  I also hate for movies to end, but that's another syndrome for another time.  

Having been this way for at least 53 of my 54 years (there are those pesky fractions again), I've finally discovered the key to completing anything is like the end of a relationship for me--what defines the end of one relationship is the beginning of another. And yes, I realize that is from a movie, but not having watched it to the end I can't tell you which one.  

So in order to finish, or at least DECLARE finished, the stone patio, I actually had to start another, adjacent paver patio.  

The paver patio has been really useful...in forcing me to find other projects attractive. I've recently completed several, rather than follow through with the big project. Since starting the paver patio I have:

 1.  Added several square (actually round) feet to the stone patio, and when that was (choke) finished, 

add the sloping rock gardens & natural stone 'steps' to join it to the paver patio, which I liked so much, 

2.  I doubled the size of one rock garden to wrap around the side of the stone patio, & when there was no conceivable way to extend (read 'drag out') that project further & I was in serious danger of having to resume work on the paver patio, 

3.  I extended up instead of down, & cleared underbrush from the area above the stone patio to make a level pad grilling area, surrounded by colorful plants & shade.  

4.  Again faced with the paver patio, I again turned my back & built up, composing a 'crackpot wall' out of broken pot shards, rocks, & transplanted bromeliads, up the slope behind the grilling area. 

When, in near panic, I realized the stone patio, rock gardens, grilling area & 'lazy wall' slope were, in fact, all complete, I turned to the paver patio &...

5.  Instead cleared & replanted the big planters by my kitchen door,

then 

Planted Petria vine & transplanted Surinam cherry bushes to spots in front of the blue cinder block wall, & then

6.  Cleared all the piles of stuff that had accumulated during high season on every available surface in my living/dining/kitchen area & cleaned,

7.  Took down one of my other almost finished projects--faux Roman shades that needed one more rod casing in the middle to make them less faux/more functional,

8.  Which caused me to take down all the screens & wash them...

& then the Windows, inside & out. My house thus converted into a bright & happy little fishbowl (HI NEIGHBORS!!), I started to address the remaining room of 'potential piles,' my studio...

Found it too scary & so

9.  I made an assessment of the front porch furniture, opted to give away 4 swiveling rattan chairs before I could reconsider/repaint & keep them.  Then I surveyed the orchids to decide which weren't thriving & tied the punies in trees where they should be happier. 

10.  I then realized Mu has confounded the oddsmakers & at 10 years old, learned a new trick--how to vanish through chain link fence & walk herself around the neighborhood (SIX TIMES now), so I got planks, chicken wire & fence ties & after 5 tries, believe I have finally mastered my Alcatraz project, leaving her to scrape her tin kibble cup along the bars & focus on her harmonica practice. 

Taking one last glance to be sure the studio is as frightening as I recall (YES!  NOT GOING IN THERE YET!!),

11.   I draped washed-soft canvas painter's tarps over the big red sectional sofa to decide if my plan to make slipcovers of the tarps would work (& it does--fabric feels great & the stone color will be a refreshing neutral when paired with bright toss cushions), 

12.  Cut out/sewed a marketing tote from upholstery fabric, then cut out 2 more...

Looked at the studio once more.  Shut that door once more.

13.  Stopped at Home Depot & photographed available cement block options with their prices & 

Found it too scary & so

Looked at the studio once more.  Shut that door once more.

14.  Plotted 3 large slightly raised, terraced veggie beds, 

15.  And after work, I'll stop at Home Depot & make arrangements for delivery of 100 blocks, rebar, Quickcrete & landscaping gravel,

So I can lay out the planting beds &

FINISH THE PAVER PATIO. 

It's either that, slipcover the sofa, or organize the dreaded studio.

Time to break up with the damn patio.

'Project-ing'

Mu, approving the one completed project--the sloping rock garden planted in pineapples, of course!

The accepted APA psych definition of projecting is something akin to 'the act of bestowing upon someone who is not you characteristics, traits, syndromes, phobias or obsessions that are actually yours.'   It is the adult version of the kids' taunt 'I am rubber, you are glue, what bounces off me...is surely your own paranoid outlook, colored with your predominant narcissistic tendencies.' 

OK, I'm paraphrasing. 

(It should be noted here that this concept is the basis for many marital arguments.)

My definition is very different, yet curiously related:

'Project-ing'- the tendency to plan many elaborate, epically-scaled projects with the absolute conviction that you will quickly complete every aspect of said plan in stellar fashion...despite the fact (obvious to all but the 'Project-or') you possess absolutely NONE of the requisite skill sets to even approach accomplishing same.

(And I should note here that this is the basis for HGTV.)

So...let me tell you about the exciting projects I have planned for the summer off-season!! (Because, as Charlie Brown faces a football-holding Lucy & opts to kick every time, I embrace the definition of insanity gleefully at this point every year.)

I have five big ones planned, averaging a manageable one per each ship-less month from early May through October. I have to confess that I originally jotted the notes for this post on 3/29/16, & since then I have actually crossed one of these off, having accomplished it as a step toward adding a biggie to the list. So here goes:  

1.  Studio rehab, including desk upgrade (Don't believe this one at all. I say this so often I don't even believe me.)

2.  Rock garden & natural stone steps in the back yard. This is the one I was able to check off, because I accidentally completed it while adding another huge one to the list--a 15'x15' gridded coral stone paver & grass patio...on a pretty steep slope...WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!?  In my defense, I'm really pleased with the rock garden, probably because I didn't have to level anything...& because it was a great spot to plant more pineapples, one of my addictions. 

Also in the process of carting quarry dust down-slope to make a level (there's that foul word again) bed for the pavers, I unearthed some huge stones I'm currently using to extend the upper natural local stone patio I made a few years back. And then I'm cutting down a scrub tree, adding a bed of quarry dust & setting 2' square concrete pavers (that were in the yard under a clothesline I got rid of when I bought the house in 2008) in a shady spot above the upper patio to make a flat grilling area. On the slope curving behind the grilling pad, I'm adding some rock ledges & bromeliad babies from all over my yard. Oh, & I liked the paver retaining wall I built to retain the new patio so much that it also spawned a new project goal--raised planting beds for veggies & casual cutting flowers (sunflowers & zinnias). 

With all that, you see that 'accomplishing' a task is generally a beginning, never an ending in my manic process. 

3.   Touching up the sky-blue block wall at the back of my property & stencilling giant tropical leaves all over it.

4.  Slip covering my big red sectional sofa in stone-tone canvas (washed drop cloths that mimic Belgian linen...in low light...if you squint).

5. Kitchen facelift, including painting white all the dark wood accent cabinets that break up my funky, cozy little orange kitchen.  

NOTE:  That last one will almost surely cause me to start 'project-ing' plans for a new countertop NEXT summer. Stay tuned for before, after, & never gonna happen.

BOINGGGGGG!

Spring should come with a warning sign at my house today. "Pollinators may be closer than they appear." You take your life into your hands walking out my kitchen door. You could end up with a hummingbird up your nose, or maybe one of those big black fuzzy bees somewhere you'd rather not.  

On the porch, there is a Jets and Sharks-worthy war with a pair of young bananaquits manically nest shopping. They're fixated on the bamboo palm in the corner, seemingly oblivious to the conflict of Mu's fave nap spot being less than 2' away.  They eyeball her, dismiss her as a minor fuzzy distraction, & obsessively plunge back into the task at hand. At least no one has flown into the house to scout homesites yet, as happens every spring. 

The pair of young kestrels in my next door neighbor's Norfolk pine do all their 'he-ing & she-ing' in a ridiculously inconvenient spot atop the pointy & miserably uncomfortable-looking treetop.  Then again, I'm not a raptor & maybe that's a night at the Ritz for them. 

After the torrential (& WONDERFUL--the cistern overflow is trickling, making spring cleaning chores like washing upholstery, screens & windows much more likely--not a lock mind you, just a strong possibility) rain yesterday, the world is turning chartreuse again & there are buds wherever you look. The pineapples, no longer pining for rain, pomegranates shaking pompoms, and the African tulip managing to avoid a bad pun & is simply covered in waxy orange blooms.  

A note here regarding the Thunbergia vines, in ever-expanding, blob-style mounds around my house:  To the friends concerned I'll eventually be trapped inside by the aggressive vines, the tonnage of fat periwinkle blooms is absolutely worth it, so...respectfully...put away your machete & back away slowly & no one will get hurt. 

We don't have a ship until Monday, & though I'm making stock & filling an order, I can feel the 'factory' (me, Mu, a hammer, an anvil & a Joan Crawford movie) starting to step down activities in anticipation of the long, ship-less & hopefully hurricane-less summer. My eleven giant pots full of Seaglass start nagging for contents to be sorted by shade & shape.  I start abandoning black & white movies & move to the technicolor surroundings of the orchidy porch in front (where I am now) or umbrella tables in back for my studio. By the end of this week the shallows of West End beaches will require my presence, promising glass to fill a twelfth pot.  

And the long list of projects I've planned for the off-season will start shimmering on the horizon, a mirage of the absolutely possible, though improbable summer ahead.