STOP!
Sometimes life accelerates, careens and leaves me sputtering in it’s dust. I just hang on and try and learn something along the journey – hopefully something productive and positive, not just “I should have stayed in bed!”. Here it is mid-October and I’m just now looking up to realize that I’ve lost a month!
Lost a month, yet gained some perspective.
I’ve reveled in the harvest of more tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and peppers than I’ll probably ever see in another season. I’ve cooked, preserved, and feasted with loved ones. The eating was very, very good this summer.
I’ve seen the desert and said goodbye; suffered a loss and cemented new ties. I’ve laid my weary head in unfamiliar beds, clocked hundreds of miles on the highway and spent way too much time in airports.
I’ve cleaned my office and cleared my desk for an exciting new writing project. And at the same I’ve rejoiced as regular bread-and-butter writing assignments have materialized to carry the every day. I’ve wrestled with contracts and finances and slain the dragon of self-doubt and insecurity (at least for now).
With cooler weather – much cooler weather – I’ve begun to clean up the garden and put it to rest at the end of another growing season. The winter fava beans are planted as is my winter wheat. Yet rotting tomatoes still tenuously cling to their succumbing vines – even more disgusting to clean up than the free-range dust bunnies in my office.
I’m SMACK in the middle of my annual much-dreaded and hotly contested competition with Major League Baseball for the attentions of my husband. And this weekend I’m off on yet another plane for another quick jaunt to California – although this trip promises gardens, good friends and even some flea market adventure.
It’s been a wild and wooly ride; certainly not one I necessarily saw coming last month as I blissfully canned, blithely planned and made commitments. Tears, fears, cheers & even some jeers. But as I prepare to step over the significant half-century mark in the very near future, I can’t think of any place I’d rather be.
glorious color
nail head totem
blue sky bottletree
These images are all from the Reflecto House in Ellensburg, Washington – a most welcome diversion on a recent roadtrip, and a magnificent example of heart-on-your-sleeve, personal garden-making.
