I’ve packed up. The forget-me-nots, the slate bench, the little seedhouse. Bird baths, coneflowers, even the mint- every kind. The fig tree! My scrappy stoop pine with the long needles and the ginko, oh so very patiently they waited for years to stretch their roots beyond a temporary plastic pot. Me too. It took too long.
It’s different, so different. I had learned each inch of a tiny patch of shade, nestled in the back surrounded by birdsong. Doves calling to each other across the yard, always an answer. It was a way station, a safe harbor. Here the sun is a harder task master, but everyone rises to the occasion. Light floods every inch and bursts through the windows, so demanding!
Last season was a race to populate this new, more barren patch. This year the rains have come to the aid of my fledgling garden and supported my efforts to reshape the remnants of some antique gardiner’s long-ago patch… the wisteria! Honeysuckle! And vines galore, yet to be named. Some less lovely occupants have been beaten back, a poison ivy older than me, a more contemporary appearance of knotweed. More welcome flowers and seeds quickly fill the yard- birds and butterflies have noted the change, even the doves have found me… I wait to hear their calls grow stronger as they gather at dawn on the front walk.
I can see that I have not posted here since June, 2019. The ‘before-times’. Like you, I could not know what was to come, and on so many levels. For me, there was work to be done that would take me away from these little notes and observances, from recording and from actualizing things. The course of life demands our attention and we oblige. I wait and watch for the seam of light to appear as a new door cracks opens. And here there is an abundance of light.
