Field Note: The Life You've Grown

Coffee in one hand.

Harris nearby.

A slow wander through the garden before putting in contacts and applying makeup.

Espresso with frothed ½ n ½ .

XOXO <3

Sometimes this is exactly enough.

Gardens are good places for thoughts that have already been thought.

Not to solve them.

Not to analyze them one more time.

Just to let them settle.

You can check on what's growing.

See which flowers are thriving.

Notice whether the mint has once again decided to take over the known universe.

Watch the pollinators making their rounds.

Maybe greet an anole sunning itself on a fence post. God, I love those little guys. Tree frogs, where are you?

Discovering that absolutely nothing urgent in the known universe is happening except a bee visiting a bloom.

There is something fitting about that.

For years, I have been tending myself the way a gardener tends a neglected corner of land.

Clearing what was harmful.

Protecting what was fragile.

Planting new things.

Putting in barriers to hostile visitors.

Planting things that host natural guardians and discourage invaders.

Waiting through weathering seasons that felt far too long.

Trusting growth I could not yet see.

And now, when I look around, the signs of life everywhere.

Not perfection.

Life.

I have

A blog.

A shop.

Art.

Vintage treasures.

A home that feels like a sanctuary.

Children growing up collecting treasures and questions of their own.

Three cats and one exceedingly professional baked-potato Shepard mix.

A bookish husband with a library.

A woman who is learning to enjoy her own company.

That is quite a garden.

So I wander.

I let the sun warm my shoulders.

I let Harris conduct his inspections.

I notice Salvo lounging in the pots. Waiting for an anole? Mmm… girl.

And when thoughts of old hurts drift by, I do not wrestle them to the ground.

I notice them. Hurt people hurt people. Fine. Radical acceptance. Organizations protect the organization. Processes trump common sense and decency. Fine. Radical acceptance.

Then I keep walking toward the next flower.

The garden does not demand a verdict. Demanding a verdict is pointless. No powers.

The garden does not ask me to rehash the past.

It does not require me to justify what I know, how I know, who I know, why i know.

It simply asks me to be present in the life I have grown.

And for today, that is enough.

Observation: Even when destruction happens, it clears room for new beginnings, new growth. Sedum and canna lilies were devastated, but then they came up lighter and more spread out. The bee balm ran rampant, but the penny wort was pushed out. It can’t compete. Where I lost a plant, something new showed up. Where something didn’t come back, I can find something new for. Life is good. What falls away was good.