Back to work now, but for a month I was only myself. Or: for a month I moved slowly - inching, crying, impatiently disrupted and afraid, toward my own center. I went away and came back, multiple cars broke, Aster rode in a tow truck for the first time. I prayed dry-eyed to the gods of burnout at the Western edge of the Pacific and I bowed weeping at the thrift. There was a new washing machine and a new engine and a new bumper and a newly minted high school graduate and other than the kid, all these things were old - cast offs, adapted and respectfully tended by people I respect, who operate in the other economy - where new things barely exist. I spoke some bad Spanish, read some poetry, tended the archive and the divorce. I walked with Aster 1000 times for at least 100 miles. I asked myself if I have done anything in this life and if I am going to do anything at all. I said, what is the point?? I cooked and cleaned; I wrote; I learned that some estrogen patches are different than others and some work for me and some don't and I saw what can happen in a few weeks: a glimpse into the spiral of a deeply hormonally unbalanced mind-body, and it scared me.
Meanwhile, all along, the garden.
Orange poppies moved from the sidewalk strip. Ditto starburst allium. Black foliage dahlias shifted from the strangling root grip of the bamboo - already thriving in this soft soil. Peonies divided and replanted from wherever the heck they were. Grasses from Lowes years ago, bought for an installation thru OTF at Willamette U, dragged about in pots, delighted to be in the Earth (can you imagine the relief?). Roses from the divorce garden on Sauvie, before that at 5615, before that: David Austin bare root. The fox gloves doing their own thing, with some nudging by me.
A Nootka there in the center, from a natives nursery (Echo Valley?) and that gorgeous and strong dark leaved rose. Another character from the street strip, starting to recover from my vicious, adamant transplant (when tough plants thrive in shitty conditions... they don't want to move): a pea relative I don't have a name for. That Nootka is wild in all this sun and fertility and sprouting runners everywhere. I know, I know, I'll be the one editing them out. But sometimes when I think about a garden what I think is what can this garden do for herself? Who will still be here if there is no supplemental water for years? If no one weeds? Who will still be here for the bugs, the birds? If this Nootka takes over - ok. If the oak can stand, yes. The foxgloves will continue their cycle, the native bumbles will make their homes.
The oak. Two years in the ground this October. I'll write them a birthday post.
The lavender I planted because Mo said so. To heal the tree hole.
Newest surprise. Who are you?
This orange rose. Oh the journey we have been on together, my friend.
Aster's fish, in the path. She love gardening.
All the rest of the plants that were in front of the bamboo, starved and choked, I moved to this corner. Joe Dirt came and took the dying fig out, and worked the bamboo back to its enclosure. We laughed: the job never done, but he helped me get a little momentum.
Sweet rhubarb transplant from Beth and Benjo's yard. Next year we will eat her. And this fountain grass - lush! This is the year I learn more about grasses.
All the Douglas Spirea from the divorce garden is thriving. The rest is on the other edge of the little deck - not pictured. Also here: a mallow that made it through last winter; some asclepius from this year (how few plants I have bought) and one of the purple mint relative - many of whom are splashed about the garden from the bamboo bed transplant. The ones that take will bloom next year - I've given them lots of choices.
The opened space - where I'll put down weed cloth after another pass with the pick axe, and then a steel garden bed on top. Some place for lettuces and sunnies. Kale and beets. I think. we'll see.
Last view before we go in the door. I would never have planned this garden - a garden like this. Maybe I would never have planned this life. But here we are, alive. Together.
