“It’s pretty typical for me to say that I can do something in an afternoon, that ends up taking ... an extremely compressed afternoon. 12 Cleome, 6 Sweet William, a tray of Portulaca, 2 Heliotrope ... all looking for space, in an already cram-packed perennial garden. I might have to make space, which means cleaning up an area, first. I don’t have enough time in the day, to linger on the things I love, though it’s not a bad problem to want to do more. The balance hangs between “crisis-gardening”, such as peonies that can’t wait another week to be staked, and “finesse”. I thrive on both. What has gone better than expected? The climbing rose on the tractor shed, looking full and branching across the trellis in just the right way, with only a little bit of pruning. The smoke bushes, their pungent maroon finally punching thru after an early spring encounter with my loppers. Add to that, what I’d hoped would fill in: the yarrow, rose campion, digitalis & hosta, punctuated by new heathers, iris transplants and reliable bergenia. Each day brings something different. Like another loop up to my old house, where I’m getting out of my truck strangely happy, feeling in my bones the poignant shift of ownership, & my visceral exile from a placed formerly called “home”. Walking on new floorboards, seeing the exposed rafters where corrugated roofing once was, I’m praising them for moving beyond my paradigm. I know I’ve done well to let go. I won’t come home here, no, not ever again. Finality is a kind of ultimate liberation. As in, when the universe says “Nope” just prior to a future, in which many other hidden doors begin to open. I pull into the dooryard of the woodshed reflexively, intent to load the old boards. No, not my lumber, but, ironically, now mine. Milled directly off a property in Newfane, VT, trees felled by friends, friends who traded favors, and ended up with buildings raised, made plumb and stuffed with life. This is special lumber. These are the widest of pine boards, un-planed, almost a novelty. I can’t find fault in the ethic: to see each man through to the conclusion of his particular dream, no matter how flawed. A majority of them, now divorced, remarried, or made whole by unique agreements both liberated & self-indulgent, who honor pacts of undying support to each other. Quaint, oddly powerful, strictly adhering to bardic odes of male loyalty. Not surprisingly, I was an uppity female caught on the wrong side of their tracks. Naively thinking I was equal, naively thinking I was seen at all, much less seen with any accuracy. I may never forgive this crowd of “blinders on” devotees, but someone else will and that is exactly where my story diverges from theirs. This forest road, with it’s ambling way of disappearing, has sent me deeper into a more natural habitat. Far from any highly structured social hierarchy, and into the verdant undergrowth, where I’d always meant to make my home. Used to speaking with ferns on a daily basis without much pretense, I’ve said: “You have to come out, “, and with my shovel, followed thru. In this biome of over-powering greenery, eradicating things will allow them to come up again, somewhere else. But it’s certainly not a death sentence, nor would I ever execute another being, given the choice. There’s no way to suppress a vibrant reality, right? The truth, if you like, affecting your feelings & causing you to think, and demanding you act according to your conscience: it lurks within you, pressing into your heart from behind. You can comply, comply, and go along with what they say, but deep inside, fragrant acres of wild flowers are blooming, just where you thought you were set in stone. There are fluencies to your human programming your soul will side with, a bowl of lotus, water lily, and more.”
