The Happy Place

A bunch of stuff I don't know the names of, some stuff I forgot the names of, some hen-and-chicks, and some mint.

The free flagstones Dan found in some alley. (The resultant chiropractor visit, however, was not free.)

One of my yard birds.

Colonel Mustard & Chief Mango, formerly buried yard treasure.

Peep is my best helper. These plants will never have to drink again.

Softy

It’s finally cooled off enough that I can work in the Little Back Side Yard again. I’m excited to play back there, but I know nothing about gardening.

Over the summer, I read a bunch of stuff online about it. Didn’t help much. I checked out a bunch of books from the library that helped even less. Finally, I decided the best way to learn-- just begin it. Last week I bought a bunch of little plants at the local nursery and transplanted them, hoping for the best. It’s really tricky keeping fingers crossed while digging holes.

I expected to approach gardening like parenting. The parallels are clear-- planting seeds, watching them grow, pulling weeds, metaphors everywhere. I figured I’d plant some stuff, be ruthless with the pruning, and let the garden find its own way. Just like raising Miss G.

I would not describe myself as a particularly nurturing mother. I love Miss G to pieces, and she loves me back just as hard, but it’s tough love both ways. She didn’t tolerate being fussed over even as a baby. She started out independent, as self-sufficient as it’s possible for a baby to be. And she’s grown into a girl with a huge heart for those she loves, but no patience for the rest of the world... just like her mama.

Only -- in the garden, it turns out I’m a big marshmallow mess.

I hovered over the new transplants like a nervous helicopter-- watering them three times a day, checking on them at least twice that often. I shirk other chores, investigating the hen-and-chicks to see if they’re spreading yet, suffering little heartbreaks with every edge of green leaf fading to brown. The dogs are no longer allowed past the steps. I bristle even when the kids come out.

It’s funny to discover this side of myself. Well-- rediscover it. I know I’m a softy at heart. Always have been. I guard myself extra tight because of it. But parenting requires an edge, consistency and discipline mixed liberally in with all the love. I didn’t notice the edge took over. Miss G is so anti-coddling anyway, and our pre-Dan life didn’t leave much room for indulging emotions that gained us nothing. I had to fight and scrap for both of us; I guess gentle went dormant along the way.

I like feeling that edge soften when I’m digging in the dirt. I like even more that my life has arrived at a place where I can reclaim my gushy center.

The Wiz

About six months ago, Dan found hundreds of dollars' worth of flagstone someone dumped out in the desert. Scavenging packrat that he is, he scooped it up for possible future use. We unloaded his truck, leaning domino stacks of the stuff across the front of the house and all along the fence, while visions of a front patio danced in our heads.... maybe wrapped around to the kitchen... with enough left over for various small projects. (Like little back side yards!)

Thank god we didn't start out with the front porch; we would have only made it a quarter of the way through before running out. It looked like so much material when it was piled up around the front yard. Laid down flat, turns out it wasn't so much after all.  We had exactly the just-right, serendipitous amount for the Little Back Side Yard, plus miscellaneous little pieces left over. They'll be just right for making walkways between the floating veggie planters out front.

Laying the flagstone out, although it took most of the day, was far less hassle than I'd anticipated. In my mind, I put things off because of the complications involved (At least, I guess that's why I put things off. Does anyone really know why they procrastinate?) --so to find it wasn't that much work after all made me feel... well, ridiculous.

 How many other things in my life are Wizards of Oz, built up to enormous, intimidating proportions? Are all the things I avoid confronting just scared little men behind curtains?

Conquering Inertia

Two miraculous things happened this week:

1.) A job call finally, finally came in for Dan
2.) I finished clearing the Bermuda grass out of the Little Back Side yard.

Dan's been out of work since February. February of last year. At first, the layoff was perfect-- with our wedding & honeymoon coming up at the end of March, he needed time off anyway. Plus, one of us was staying home with the kids over the summer, and we'd already agreed it would be him. I had a new project firing up that was scheduled to last through Christmas; I would support us through summer, and Dan would go back to work in the fall.

Great plan. Except right about then, the recession caught up to Vegas. The construction industry went from great guns to bare trickle in the span of a few months. Upcoming projects went abruptly stagnant or declared bankruptcy. Or both. By Christmas, I was fully laid off as well-- and not "laid off for a couple months while waiting for the next project to start" but "laid off with no future prospects... EVER."

So, we are now--  six nail-chewing months later-- exhaling in giddy relief. It took almost a year for Dan to move up to the number one slot on the out-of-work books, just from number 8; the list is in the hundreds now. At my Union, the list is in the thousands.

I can't think of a worse time to realize we need new careers. But at least now we can keep putting food on the table while we're restructuring our lives.

As for the Bermuda grass, well... I guess its call came in too. It's about as likely for me to finish something as it is to get a job when there are no jobs. For the former, though, I can't blame the economy. It's just me holding myself back, and that is something I can change.

I reached my inactivity saturation point this week. The last few mornings, I found myself getting up with Dan and packing him off to work in the pre-morning dark. I wrote until it was light enough to work outside, then hit the Little Back Side Yard, fully armed with gardening gloves, shovel, and good audio book. It felt really, really good to put in a full day before 10 am.

Nothing moves forward unless something moves it-- unless we move it. This isn't new; Newton called it out some 400 years ago. I don't know where this newfound 'exerted force' came from, but I'm going to ride it as long as it lasts, and do what I can to keep it rolling.

Everything's a stupid life metaphor

"Most vines will quickly revert to a tangled mass of foliage on the ground if they are not given proper support and a reasonable amount of care and maintenance."

I stalled out on the Little Back Side Yard. It's always been very hard for me to finish projects, no matter how clearly I can see -- and want-- the carrot dangling in my mind's eye. Some folk say that taking the first step is the hardest one.  It's hard, I guess, but not nearly as hard as the second step.  And they're both impossible when I don't know which way to go.

"Often, when plants are purchased from the nursery they are already trained on a stake driven into the container." 

I'm jealous of people with unwavering ambition, and wonder what gene they have that I'm missing. My lack of direction is something I've never understood about myself.  It isn't that I shy away from hard work; I feel most alive when I'm really focused and fighting for something.  How is it that neither that feeling nor the goal itself sparks enough incentive in me to get anywhere?  These are things I want to change about myself, but it's mighty hard to change under the brutal regime of hard-to-start and never-finish-anything.

"Remove the stake and any twist ties at planting."

Habits are embarrassingly powerful. I read somewhere it takes 21 days of doing something every single day for it to become a habit. That's encouraging for starting new habits (Three weeks?  No problem!). But then, it's disheartening to realize that the damaging habits are there because I've a) done them 21+ days in a row and/or b) haven't been able to NOT do them for 21+ days.

"Historically, vines were severely pruned at planting. Remove dead or damaged branches and shape the plant as needed."

Many people live their lives without being haunted by their past mistakes and bad habits. I am not one of them. I want to learn how to be; hard or not, changes need to happen, and I know I'm responsible for holding myself back. I feel dizzy from spinning in circles for the past 10 years. Or maybe the past 34 years. Everything in my life is upside down right now, and I desperately need to find solid ground.  It's been a crappy few months-- or few years-- or maybe a crappy decade-- and I want to shed all that and move forward. So where do I start, recovering the energy lost over that much time? How do I find a new path after so many years in the same groove? 

"New vines often need guidance in reaching the intended support."

So, I started seeing a counselor a few months ago.  I need objectivity and experience  to help me transition. Shifting from single mom to stepmom-- trying to build a family where there is none, fighting to stay sound and true in the face of internal and external quicksand-- has been the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. Then, on top of that stress, add the daily balancing act of juggling job and family, plus the stress of spotty work, continuing health problems from said work, touch-and-go finances, and an emotionally ravaging custody battle. I'm a pretty tough cookie, but that's at least one high-octane situation too many for me to handle without professional guidance.

I like my counselor. She's spunky, has a great sense of style, and gives me actual advice instead of the vague, "And how does that make you feel?" I think I'm getting some good out of the visits, and felt pretty positive about the whole thing--  until last week, when she told me I had to think of ways to change my negative thought patterns for our next session.  

Lady, if I knew how to do that on my own, I wouldn't be paying you.

"Use a short piece of string, netting, or stake to provide guidance to the lower portions of the support (trellis, fence)." 

But, okay. I'll give it a shot. It's not like I didn't know counseling would involve some serious soul-searching. I got home, pondered my homework, and tried not to glower. The cat wanted to go out to the Little Back Side Yard, and I went with him. It's peaceful out there; it's just dirt and rocks right now, but it's the one place in my life where I feel excited about possibilities instead of overwhelmed by just how to realize that potential. I noticed the vines were not properly climbing, and immediately set about to remedy the situation. Why train the vines at that moment, when I'd been putting it off for over a month already?  Who can say. This is exactly typical of how I manage to accomplish things: a combination of accident and impulse. 

I'd initially wrapped the vines loosely around the fenceposts, meaning to train properly in the next day or two , but I never had gotten around to it. In the weeks since then, they'd deliberately released the support of the fence and wrapped back around themselves, down into the dirt. They were starting to choke out their own bases. Exasperated, I wondered what the hell kind of plant doesn't instinctively grow upwards. Stupid vines.

Disentangling the tiny runners from themselves and re-wrapping them along string lines was a delicate and time-consuming business.  My initial irritation at the vines gave way to identifying with them exactly.

"The main reasons to prune established vines include: limiting vigorous growth, clearing around windows and doors, enhancing flower production, thinning branches, and removing dead or damaged wood."

It's so much easier to travel an established path than set out fresh runners on a virgin course. It doesn't matter that all the preceding vines have died out along the old road; the dead branches are convenient to hold onto and follow, much moreso than climbing up a sheer fencepost. Unless I clear out all the dead crap and provide easily accessible string freeways for their travels, they'll continue doing what their predecessors have done. What else do they know, after all? It's a growth habit years in the making. They need a fresh start.

"Spring-flowering vines are usually pruned after they finish flowering, while most other vines are pruned during the dormant season."

I need a fresh start myself. I'm taking time off from work right now precisely to clear out my mental bracken, extricate myself from whatever is holding me back. I can't skip this step, can't wander vaguely off on a new journey without pruning out the old growth first. Not eradicating the dead tangles from my life is exactly what's kept me circling the same old roundabout. New results never arise out of doing the same thing that's always been done.  

"A mass of new shoots may appear after severe pruning; select the strongest shoots and remove the rest."

This isn't to say I can't or won't make mistakes going forward; I will. But I can choose to learn from them instead of dwell on them. I can honor the lessons learned instead of resent that I had to learn them at all. And the flipside of this sentiment is not feeling guilty that I'm not accomplishing things as quickly as I could, or think that I should. The Little Back Side Yard will get there, and I'll get there too.

Excerpts from Training/Pruning Vines by Erv Evans © 2000, used by kind permission of NC State University.

Mint

I've been on a mission to get a veggie garden in our front yard, but it's been obstacle after obstacle.  Pretty soon it will be too hot for plants to want to sprout, and we haven't even tilled the manure in with the soil yet. It's hard to coordinate schedules;  Dan is working on house projects for his folks, and it never seems like a good day to spend hours digging holes. It's making me crabby.


I decided to take my frustrations out on the little side-yard out back of our bedroom door.   It's a disaster;  it's been run over by weeds and Bermuda grass which has grown thigh-high.  It's beyond the mower's capacity to tame at this point, so I scrounged up my gardening gloves and hand shears, popped in some ass-kickin' music, and hunkered in for the weekend.


Hacking out unwanted growth is fantastically cathartic.  My aggravation eased up with every yanked root.  Within an hour, I was happy in my productive solitude, unearthing various "yard treasure" (as Dan calls it):  a tiny green army man, bayonet shouldered and ready for action;  a green marble;  a boring attachment for a drill.  I also found some near-smothered vines with pretty white flowers;  star jasmine, I think... they'd poked through their way through fence slats from our neighbors'.  I gently disentangled them from the barbed Bermuda grass runners and re-wrapped them around the fence post.  


Then I smelled nostalgia, and paused.  Mint? 


The Minnesota cabins where we'd spent our family summers growing up had mint running wild on the beach.   The smell of fresh spearmint  is forever tied to bare feet and beach walks and artesian well water.  There were only two rules in summer:  Don't yell "Help!" when you're swimming unless you actually need help.  And no wearing bathing suits at the table.  


When we bought our current house, I was happy to find our neighbors had mint growing up by the sidewalk.  I break off a leaf whenever I walk by.  Some of it must've migrated.  I hunted in the tangle in front of me, and-- yes, there it was: a defiant little patch of mint.  I freed it from the oppressive overgrowth and thought for a minute, looking again at the fencepost, with its curling vines and fragrant mint.  


I'd planned on just lining the whole thing with pavers and maybe set some planters out here and there. The mint changed my mind.  This funny little back side-yard needs to be a garden, a real garden, overrun with trailing vines and moss-edged flagstones.  It's just enough shade back there for plants to survive the oppressive desert summers.  Daisies, lavender, maybe a little fountain.  Enough room for an Adirondack chair just there, in the corner.  


I've been feeling a little strangled in overgrowth and choked out by runners myself these days.  But if the mint can find its way in all this tangle, surely I can find my way too.