I Want It Back

So what if people don't blog anymore. I am 45 this summer and I just got my first pair of readers and they are too weak already. I need the 2.0s. My eyes are probably prematurely aging from looking at the tiny close screen too much. I don't want a substack, even though Dad Bod is so dreamy and funny. I don't want instagram, even though every once in a while I go on there just to see the TikToks that amb has collated for the week. That's how old I am. I have to do a passcode loop to get into my instagram account so I can watch TikToks for 30 minutes before my timelimiter engages.

 I just want to make notes in my little online garden journal like I used to. 

See, internet? This is a house where I live now and pay the mortgage. The house was built the same year as the house whose mortgage I used to pay. 

I made these pictures back on July 25. Today is August 2. I was documenting the front yard because that is where I spend the least amount of time but it is smaller so it is easier to think about plans there. Less overwhelming. 

I have had a lot of impact in the front yard in the 15 months I have been waving my garden wand over this place. 

There's a lot of pictures of all of it, none of them linked here. There was the clematis vine removal. The cutting back of the two sculpted evergreen shrubs that made me feel like I was at someone else's house. The transplant and subsequent death of another daphne from the back yard. The near death of half of the beautiful giant manzanita that I have now maybe saved by removing 3/4 of the south-facing body and 3/4 of the smoke bush behind it. I pruned the two western red cedars, a lot. I tore so much dead and mildewed foliage out of the area where the clematis wines had made just a pile below the porch. I planted four snowberries under the lifted limbs of the cedars. Nolan wrestled the last of the witch bush out of the corner when he was here in June. 

To do: 

- finish moving the last of the driveway of barkchips into the front beds

- move the straaaggggling raspberries that seem to always to survive without any water and see if they can make fruit if I put them against the house in the backyard and handwater them for a summer

- more asters under the manzanita! 

- and maybe some heather there too. I'll ask at Xera when I go in September - I have many semi shady dry ass spots in this garden 

- manzanita for the N corner

- before that, get the varigated dogwood(?) and the heuchera and the hardy fuscia and maybe that white rose out of the hole in front of the porch

- move the peonies that are rotting under the japanese anemone to the back yard. 

- divide and spread the japanese anemones

- hope the daphne doesn't freeze this winter without the manzanita over it

- continue to tie up and support the regrowth of the clematis

- cut back the stupid garden-center spirea in front of the stair posts

- paint the damn stair posts

- kill the daylilies and the fugging purple bells in the corner by the gate

- cut back the mock orange

I know. It's a long list. Which doesn't include figuring out how to get water up there. And that's just the front yard. I will not make a backyard list because it would be boring and I will not be able to rememeber everything and self-defeat is not a sport.

I feel really worried about this dogwood. I feel amazed this rose survives. This is the path the new studio renters and their clients will take to get to the studio and I want it to be passable. I have very clear, succinct ideas for the bed on the right which include 

- either dividing the giant hellebore here (is that a thing?) or planting another one

- small ferns

- a lil drip line I put down today (for another post in which I encourage myself to water during August) 

- cleaning up the area around the rain barrel and ultimately decommissioning it 

- some kinda lil woodland flower vibes - maybe some of the short irises that are around the other dogwood

Ok enough. The thing that feel so hard and important at this time of my life is to experience awe and gratitude in relationship to this path of land I get to tend. It is bursting with life. The soil/soul has been loved on - by human and tree - and now the garden community is trying to find a new form in the wake of a huge tower moment. Like me. What is inside this gate feels very safe and soft. Like my heart in my chest in a home where everyone is both direct and kind, no one mocks me for what I love, I witness and receive so many kisses, so many hugs. And, when I look around I see the burden of responsibility. To be truly alive I have to be in energetic exchange. I must tend and transform in the ways that reveal themselves to me. But I often feel tired. I often feel stuck, ragged, overwhelmed. 

I want it back - the old magic that crept like a sip of whiskey through my blood when I stepped out the door.