Got to Get Back to the Garden

We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. 
(Woodstock, Joni Mitchell)

It rains Friday night. I open the window so I can listen to it on the roof. It is still raining Saturday morning; and it rains off and on all day as the clouds crack open then slide back together. The sky is hanging low early this morning; mist gathers on the windshield, though not enough to turn on the wipers. You know the kind. Except in North Carolina it is rare. Perhaps that is why I find it invigorating. And enervating. Uplifting and depressive. It is weather that puts me in touch with myself in a way that constant sun does not. It makes it okay to curl up on the couch if I want to and not feel like I should be outside or engaged in some activity. It makes it okay to be weepy and not think something is wrong with me.

I have been low-energy this week. All month, really. And I could make a long list of accomplishments. Odd that those two can stand together. I'm not sure I have ever thought about it. Energy is more than checking things off a to-do list. The check list merely serves as evidence that we have been energetic; it has nothing to do with being energized. Interior energy is a whole nother kettle of fish. It's January at work. January at my job takes a lot energy. There isn't any left when I get home. I haven't been in the garden; I haven't watched the sunrise from the cemetery (though I do catch the skyline on fire in my rearview mirror on my way to work and take my camera the next day); I haven't been walking at all. These are the energy producers in my life. I figure that out yesterday when I allow myself to be sidetracked from heading to Cafe Carolina for my Saturday coffee time. I go back in for my camera and spend a quarter of an hour taking pictures of raindrops and breathing the petrichor. The scent of the earth after rain is on my top ten list of favorite smells. Mid-afternoon I force myself out from under my afghan on the couch and walk in the cemetery in the drizzle with a friend. (Actually, I don't force myself, my commitment to my friend does; I would have happily stayed on the couch. Whatever works.)

It's so easy to think there is nothing to examine in the garden in January, so I don't go out. In a normal year, it's too early to watch for emerging plants. This year some have already emerged, but that was last month's discovery. There are a few swelling buds on the daffodils, but that's about all that's new. Aah, but there are the raindrops. Raindrops hanging on the nandina berries and glistening on the curry plant and the velvety euphorbia leaves. They form a necklace around the bottom of the candle holder hanging in the dogwood tree.There is a high gloss sheen on the autumn pumpkins I put in my garden when I switched the porch to Christmas decor. I try to take pictures of the drops on the weeping Japanese maple, but my camera lens extended in micro setting won't focus and keeps bumping the motion-sensitive drops and knocking them off as I move around trying to find enough contrast to focus.

There is an Indian (I think--I finally discovered something that Google doesn't know about, so I have to depend on memory) saying about the need for a "third place" in our lives. We have our work and we have our home. I expect many would say that is enough. That is richness. And many survive on a foundation of those two points. But for true and steady balance, we need a third place. (I am embellishing my memory here.)
Our passion may 
reside in any of the three points, but where our passion lies does not diminish the need for the other two. My work has never been my passion. I love my home and there is no place I would rather be, but with my family grown and gone it requires less of my attention and provides less inner energy. Both are important and necessary to my living. But it is the third place where my passion lies: the gardens (including the cemetery) and wherever I write. And I haven't been to the garden.

I am walking across the street from the parking lot when the neon OPEN sign comes on in the window of Cafe Carolina--welcoming me to my other third place. Brian holds the door open for me and gives me a hug, then brings me my coffee and water cups and tells me it's on him this morning. My eyes well up. I make no apology for the tears--it's raining.

I have a lengthy to-do list for today. I will add "get to the garden" to it.