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tending to my garden

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After recording Catholic Weekend this morning, I joined John on the back porch. That area has turned into quite a retreat for us, and although I complained and moaned about the expense, and especially his design for the structure, I figured it’s his hobby, stay out of it.

Except, there’s no way for me to stay out of it. In fact, I’m always in it, as in, sitting in the cool shade enjoying the breeze and the natural air conditioning when the sprinklers come on and a fine mist refreshes us. Good call, honey. I don’t even mock his little corn rows even though the neighbors tease him plenty, even calling him Farmer John.

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Anyway, so we’re sitting outside enjoying some sweet tea and watching the dog chase his tail. I’d been doing some weeding in the roses and he’d been playing around on his iPad when I came up and plopped next to him, complaining that I couldn’t get Immaculate Mary out of my head. He laughed and suggested that maybe I should get Mary out of the weeds…

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Poor Mary…I had neglected her, too. These past weeks of travel, planning, and general malaise took a toll on her in the garden, but it also took a different toll on me.

Tending to the weeds is usually an easy project. In the evenings when I sit outside with John, it only takes a few minutes for me to pull some new growth, maybe cut off some deadheads from the rose bushes, and I’m back to my cup of coffee or glass of wine to continue to enjoy our conversation. If…if…I tend to things a little bit every day. If not, things get overgrown easily. If I abandon it altogether, and I’d often done that when the children were little, it would take a backhoe to set things right again. Sometimes so much damage had been done that razing the field and starting over was the best solution.

So I patiently tackled Mary’s little area. And Momma Mary patiently tackled me, pulling some weeds out of my heart and sending me on my way, pointing in her Son’s direction.

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There’s still some work to be done. Some of those weeds took root, and the mulch needs a new layer, but things are looking better.

Much better.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

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I need to come clean here: this isn’t a new picture. I took it a few years ago while I was waiting in a carpool line and I ran out of things to do. I happened to have my camera with me and I started playing around with motion and got this shot. I’ve always liked it, as far as self-portraits go. And I can be a hipster and say I took a selfie before it became ubiquitous. Ha!

I really like this picture, and I really like the challenge to somehow capture fleeting in a photograph. I love that my eyes are not moving here;  they are focused on the moment, but the rest is in motion.

Isn’t that what happens when we get in the zone while we’re doing something we love? When I was a kid, I’d be playing so hard I wouldn’t remember to go in for lunch until my mom called me in, flustered and annoyed by the number of times she had to call for me. Later, playing basketball, I’d find my zone and time would both stand still and somehow zoom to the end of the fourth quarter.

As a young mother, I loved to rock my babies to sleep, and sometimes I’d feel like I was defying the laws of physics — the rocking chair would be moving back and forth, but my eyes would be locked on the face of the precious child in my arms, and time would stand still.

Those moments were fleeting, for sure, but they are also engraved in my mind’s eye…kind of like the picture.

 

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stopping and smelling the berries

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Wow. It’s been quite a while since I update this blog. What’s the point of doing something for pleasure if it becomes a chore — and that’s how I was looking at this little ole site for some time. A chore.

I was feeling pressure (that I created for myself, by the way) to somehow entertain or be clever for an audience. I forgot I was writing for myself because I enjoy it. The task is, of course, to figure out what is making me happy…writing? Not writing? Something else?

When I woke up this morning I took my coffee out on the porch while the dog was out doing whatever it is dogs do in the morning when there’s a big yard full of rabbits, squirrels, and birds to terrorize. There was a terrible rain last night that tore up our freshly laid mulch, and all the work was destroyed. It can be fixed, of course — restored if you will, maybe even better, but in the moment it was disappointing and frustrating to see.

As I was sipping my coffee and sighing over the mess, I caught sight of all the berries turning bright red on the vine. I’m totally aware of how many tweets and facebook statuses have been about the raspberries that are growing so abundantly in my garden, and I am amused by it. This is the same woman who tried to kill an African Violet twenty-eight years ago, and embraced the brown thumb responsible for killing every houseplant I came near since The Great Crispy Violet Episode of 1985.

I guess I was busy keeping little people fed.

Now I’m busy keeping myself fed — with fresh ripe raspberries plucked right off the vine.

Perspective is everything, I suppose. I could focus my camera on the mulch mess or the raspberries. I think I chose wisely.

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