You Will Not

Yesterday was one of those unfathomably horrid days when you can't get right.  Your skin seems to be on crooked. One or both eyes leaks at inopportune times.  Your thoughts, like darting fish, refuse to be corralled.  We've had to learn a lousy corollary to our fundamental belief--that love is love. We were once again reminded that hate is also hate.  We're left to ponder how we'll handle that unavoidable fact. Here's what I can believe, written directly to those haters:

1.  LOVE IS LOVE.  I'm referring to the love I see in my friends, every day. The love when one spouse, one boyfriend, one girlfriend, one partner tells endearingly kind funny anecdotes about their loved one--and that look on their face as they do that.  Hate, you can't have this.  It is not yours.  You wouldn't understand.

2.  LOVE IS LOVE.  I'm talking about the kids I know who are lucky enough to have two Moms or two Dads.  I'm talking about those kids who feel the direct evidence every day of their lives & those young minds, so far superior to your hate-stunted ones who know the love of being chosen to live in a caring home.  Hate, this concept is so far above your paygrade you couldn't reach it with a fire truck ladder. 

3.  LOVE IS LOVE.  And now I'm talking about the love, support, encouragement & pure, rock-solid friendship I'm lucky enough to experience from my friends of all orientations, races, sexes & beliefs every day of my life.  There is no reference, no search engine, no sphere of knowledge to explain to you, Hate, what you've missed by shutting this out of your meager, stingy existence.  

In short, LOVE IS LOVE, & I will choose to live in it as a daily protest to you, Hate.  You will not take that from me.

Recovery?

Those who know me well are expecting the title to be a play on words about upholstery. 

Fooled ya!

Drying out from a coffee addiction?

Strike TWO!

Instead, I'm pondering retrieving lost skill sets, admirable personality traits, & even lost IQ points. 

And I'm starting to believe those are attainable goals. 

A few years ago, after a lifetime spent happily concocting away in the kitchen, I forgot how to cook.

 I don't mean I forgot my fave recipes. I had only used recipes as research on time & temp, always riffing away merrily. Granted there were a few epic fails in there, but on a whole I think you'd find me a good cook, and I enjoyed it.  

And then one day, Darwin came to dinner.  

As a confirmed nocturnalist, I never minded & was in fact happy about cooking great, balanced meals from fresh ingredients & delivering them to the refinery gate or the molasses pier at midnight.  My old love would come past the guard, past the barbed wire & to me in the parking lot.  We'd sit in my ancient Cherokee, he'd eat, be very complimentary about what I had served, we'd neck a little, then nap through the rest of his dinner hour, holding hands over the gearshift. If we knew he couldn't stay & would only be able to take the food to go, I'd add a sprig of blooming basil to the bag, imagining his slow-spreading smile when he found it.  

Shut up.  Romance is where you find it, & we liked blooming basil; alright?  Don't judge.  It gives you wrinkles & antacid addiction issues.

And then life changed (as it does--no Jeep-bound dream lasts forever) & he went stateside to spend vaca with his kids who lived with his ex wife.  For ten days.  He found the kids unsupervised, undisciplined & living on McDonalds (which he blamed for the downfall of the human race).

He took a job in a steel mill, an apartment close to the kids' school, worked graveyard so he'd be with them after school, re-taught his born-in-STX, raised in VA kids to love fresh fruit.

He also forgot to tell me he had moved. Instead, two months of long, late-night phone calls (pre-cell, when they cost big bucks), hemming, hawing, declaring, swearing, promising & delaying...really started to royally piss me off.  A man of few words & those few frequently smothered under my tirades of verbiage, he could never stand disappointing me & could never quite express why he wasn't yet back home with me.  I had some trust issues based on past experience & a great imagination, & that combo led me to fill in gaps with the worst possible versions.  

At the three month mark, I forgot how to answer the phone.  Caller ID wasn't a thing yet, so if I was expecting another call I'd have to answer, & hang up when I heard his voice. As much self-preservation as vindictiveness, I simply couldn't hear his voice without becoming a quivering mass of melancholy. I swear David carried a roll of Bounty with him that entire 16 months, for the inevitable gushy mess I had become.  You want to know who your true friends are?  Try being inconsolable for over a year.  

Slowly, patiently, D cajoled, tolerated, kidded & snarked me out of it, until I was almost human again.  He didn't cook, so we ate in restaurants almost every night. I figure we both ate substantial house downpayments that year. 

I did not lift a pan, a wooden spoon, a spatula that year.  My kitchen was yet another reminder of how the best time of your life can morph into the worst in one plane ride.  I cleaned a small area in the dust for my coffeemaker, & that was the only area I paid any attention to at all.

And then, 16 months into his ten day vaca, he came back.  

And I still refused to take his calls or see him.  I wouldn't know his reasons--the backstory of his extended stay--until months later.  I wouldn't forgive him until long after that, & we wouldn't reboot, forgive & start our life together again for even longer after.  

Eventually we lived together for several years.  The kids would spend summers with us & his parents.  For all appearances normalcy had returned.  

But I forgot how to cook.  I had so thoroughly & carefully repressed all things culinary that it appeared I couldn't go back.  At one point I made a weak attempt, having to look up proper egg boiling time in 'Joy.'  There was, in fact, no joy to it, & I abandoned efforts.  D & I still ate out two or three times a week.  Without ever saying a word about it, it was understood that if you wanted a meal in our house, you'd better cook it.  I did the shopping & B did the cooking, for both of us on the nights I was home.  There was no animus, no blame or resentment. Just his cooking & our eating.  

I didn't really recover my cooking skills or love for it until over a year after we called it quits for good.  It was slow going & I tend to similarly spice a lot of different dishes, but I'm secure in saying I'm once more a decent cook.  

I think I stopped reading when my eyesight became challenging.  I had been a voracious (literally--I scarfed books like they'd spoil if left too long) reader my whole life & had 20/20.  At 41 the jewelry work took its toll & I started requiring readers in escalating strengths...& I stopped reading.  

More accurately I forgot how to read for pleasure.  

When home, I'd be in front of TV & making jewelry or ornaments. For hours.   

Last year I realized how sedentary I had become (my bathroom scales were only too happy to inform me, the bastards), & eventually self-disgust evolved into action.  One day I was exasperated with the cable company, seized the moment & gave them their spawn-of-satan cable box, admonishing them to never darken my door again...except with wifi. I needed their wifi. While I was in a chopping mood, I told them to put my erratically functioning landline where the sun don't shine.  For months the only calls I received on it were from one patient & non-enthusiastic stalker guy & the CDC, polling to see if I had vaccinated my nonexistent kids.  Sure I'd miss them, but I'd live. And live a long time on the compound interest-enhanced cable & phone deposits. I didn't have to pay for the remaining wifi service for 7 months, living off those credits.

I got Netflix but wasn't thrilled with the selection, most offerings dating to after WWII & being in color thus leaving me out.  I watched my DVDs, & eventually, after rehabbing the back yard to contain several great reading spots, picked up a book.  

In March I started trying in earnest to lose a substantial amount of weight.  I realized tv & mindless eating were wired together in my head.  I knew at 54, I'd have to change everything, to do every aspect right if I was going to have any appreciable success.  Restaurants would be a much less frequent occurrence.  Physical exertion would be crucial. I have a fabulous gift for self sabotage I'd have to strategize ways to overcome.  I'd have to really commit. 

I remembered how to cook, to read for pleasure, to garden on a big scale.  In my mind, one mantra: 'Then we will do that which is hard.'  I'm lifting, toting, shoveling this space into submission.  I pretty much live off spicy black beans I cook from dry, fresh veggies, salads, sushi tuna & key lime water, & I don't feel deprived...much.  

When I get home from work I grab my carefully portioned dinner, my book, & head to the umbrella table out back. I read 2-3 chapters & then plot the evening's project. At some point each day I make Mu happy by getting in the floor to do yoga & crunches.  She loves all the outdoor time, too.  Always a bonus when you make your pup happy.

Twenty seven pounds, several books & a lot of hardscape later, I feel better than I have in several years.    My buddy Darwin is showing me once again the joy of adaptation, of recovering.  

By the truckload

It's summer & beauty like ripening fruit is coming by the truckload. The current bit of moon is visible overhead at 3pm. I've been in the backyard since I woke up at 9. No mistaking, it is hot.  Still there is a great breeze giving the little bell chime a real work out, & the new plantings are responding well to the drink I gave them. I've been filling & placing hanging baskets everywhere. There are three in the little lime tree alone--one angel-wing begonia, one full of New Guinea impatiens & one with those chartreuse bromeliads I divided & put everywhere. They are under a branch & they fit with the idea of a secret garden--one with hidden color & sound revealed only when the breeze ruffles though. 

The reading chaise area is my current fave hiding spot, a pleasant eddy that catches you with a good book & pulls you willingly in.  I didn't intend to finish this Harper Lee today, but the chaise got me & that book is history. 

The book & lunch are over & there is still full sun on the rock pile, so it isn't yet shoveling time. And I'm having this curious sensation--an unfamiliar drive to actually complete a project. 

Hmm. What are the odds of that really happening?

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!! :)