Lord, I'm ready to get my hands in some dirt and sunshine again. Stripes of suntan on the back of my neck and the small of my back, from bending over tiny greenlings, whispering: "You can do it! Grow, grow!"
A couple of good sites that satisfy my garden lust, my green envy:
Garden Rant: I like this blog's philosophy of real gardening -- preferring bug-eaten leaves (like last year's morning glories, above) to the "perfection" that comes via declaring "chemical warfare."
High Country Gardens: Santa-Fe based nursery, specializing in xeriscaping -- plants that thrive on little water, even this far north.
Bluebird Nursery: They're mostly wholesale, but they're just an hour and a half north of here and have a great, inexpensive retail nursery specializing in native plants. They also supply plants for the annual Spring Affair fundraiser for the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum -- the best gardening deal going!
One of my favorite writers, May Sarton (read "Plant Dreaming Deep" -- now!), spent her life creating a garden, and refining the metaphorical links between garden and life. In her mid-90s, immobile and nearly blind, she would ask her caretakers to take her out to her garden beds and lay her, prostrate in the dirt, so she could feel it in her fingers, smell it into her skin.
I want to feel mud squishing through my bare toes, sweat dripping into my eye sockets. I want to eat homemade salsa on the patio (my tomatoes! my cilantro!) and admire not my actual scraggly backyard, but my fantasy of how it might look someday.
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I spoil myself.
The rewards I promise myself for completing the Nigeria package:
* Pedicure
* Netflicks subscription (Miz C: "Marie Antoinette" is on its way, just in time for movie night!)
* New glasses (the old ones broke beyond repair, and the old-old ones are disintegrating and make me look geeky, and not in a sexy way)
* More memory/disk space for my Macbook
* New bike: I want this frame in the pretty lime green, but with the specs of this one and larger, thinner wheels ...
Treats out of all proportion to the work involved. Or maybe not.
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Unsolicited advice.
I have a, talented, compassionate, gorgeous, multifacted young friend who I think is feeling overwhelmed lately. She hasn't said a thing; she certainly hasn't asked for advice or an ear to bend, so I haven't offered.
But if she's reading this, and recognizes herself, what I'd like to tell her is this:
To acknowledge a major life change (or maybe several major life changes, all at once) isn't working the way you want is NOT an admission of failure. It's OK to say things aren't working for you, and to make changes. Maybe the most mature thing we could possibly do.
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Currently listening to: New Son Volt
Currently reading: This week's The Nation; "This Is Not the Tropics" by Ladette Randolph
Currently quoting: "The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them." -- Einstein
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2 comments:
dammit. bike links don't work. Trust me -- it's purty *and* badass, jus' like me ...
I'd love to have a garden, but, alas, my thumbs are brown.
I don't think your unsolicited advice was meant for me, yet it applies. Isn't that the case with all talented, compassionate, gorgeous, multifaceted young people :)
Definitely indulge! I did Tuesday buying a purse the same size of my torso. Totally didn't need it, but it wanted me. I called to get permission from my best friend before making the splurge. Permission totally granted (and she has to know what she's talking about, she's at Columbia).
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