Autumn Schizophrenia

Week before last it was 90 degrees. Last week highs struggled to reach 60. This week it's back in the 80s.  It's the same every year, but to hear people talk--including me--you would think it's the first time in the history of the world the temperature has been so schizophrenic. It is summer's last gasp. Now, with the autumnal equinox behind us, fall struggles for a foothold. I suppose we all let go of the past kicking and screaming; and we leave skid marks as we dig in our resistant heels to what is new. Eventually it all evens out. I, for one, don't let go of the southern summer kicking and screaming. I am more than happy to leave it behind; and I love autumn--bring it on! Yesterday, in celebration, I buy beautiful yarn. I am ready to build a fire, wrap in an afghan, and knit. Which reminds me, I need to go to the Farmers' Market and buy firewood.

Staff retreat is this week. We go to our favorite place in Durham, where we love the meeting room rocking chairs and the Sisters. The food is pretty good, too; and we get our own rooms. We are less enamored with the plethora of dead Jesuses. As friend Suzanne says, "You would think it time they resurrected Jesus." I walk the meditation trail twice with my camera, which seeks out the mushrooms. It is a good retreat. Two new staff members, who are as different from one another as two people could be, join us. The new blood is good as we seek better ways to communicate with and care for each other and the congregation.

Speaking of autumn and work... yeah. Lots of work around finances and budgets and program start-up publication needs (my schizophrenic job). But one task I brought on myself this summer, when I spearheaded a refurbishing project in the front office and the hallway outside the office. And now, along with the seasonal busyness, it must be completed. As the finishing touch, a church member and I scored 
a find at Habitat ReStore: a cabinet with work table top to replace the unsightly mishmash that was next to the copier. A volunteer repurposed it beautifully and brings it upstairs mid-week. That leaves me to empty out a large metal cabinet that had been in the office, then moved temporarily to the hallway. Now it's in the soon-to-be new administrator's office. It has been reproducing junk like field mice for a couple decades, and I unilaterally decide it's time to clean out the nest. The new administrator should not have to move into a storage unit. So, I spend Saturday morning purging.

Among the items I find are:

• Enough hanging file folders to supply a large, pre-computer age business
• 17 IBM Selectric ribbons (that's a typewriter in case you have forgotten, or never knew)
• A box of labels for a dot matrix printer
• One quadrillion tabbed notebook dividers
• Tons of miscellaneous hardware (yes, in the business office); some neatly labeled, by a certain anal previous administrator, as to what long-discarded-whatever they belonged to. Others kept by someone(s) who had no idea what they went to, but couldn’t bear to throw anything away, however useless. Reminds me of my dad and his methodically-labeled box of "string too short to save"

I am not a saver. I have seen the consequences of keeping everything that someone somewhere might need someday--or not--and I travel light. When one lives alone, purging is a breeze. But I am not the only stakeholder at the church, so what doesn't get relocated goes back in the cabinet. Staff has two days to rescue what they can't live without and find someplace to keep it; on Wednesday it will be liberated from its decades-long cabinet captivity.

Back home I take stock of what's happening in the garden. I need to cut the grass, but in the past week or so there has been more rain than we have seen all summer. At least more consecutive days. With the ground too wet to mow, I take advantage of the soft earth and pull plantain weed out of the lawn. It has profited greatly from the rain. Eradication is like trying to rid the sky of stars, but I attempt.

I also clear the weedy grasses from the water meter cover. It takes me back to my childhood when it was my family's month as volunteer meter reader for the Seminary Hill Association, which bought water from the city. I love how doing something as simple as exposing the meter in my yard reminds me of going around the hill with my dad recording the meter readings in a little spiral notebook.

I wander through the yard looking for retreating plants, but I am surprised by what is experiencing rebirth. Yep, it's a schizophrenic time of year. Several of my ferns that had long since disappeared in the summer heat and drought, are poking cautiously back up, like it's spring or something! The Japanese painted fern isn't even being cagey. It's just full-out back. My favorite wild phlox that blooms wherever it wants--mostly in the yard--until the heat settles in for good, is up and blooming again. But the surprise that leaves me gasping with delight is that the Prairie Something bulbs I mail-ordered and planted three years ago that has never bloomed, is!

Every growing thing in my garden is my most something. Even the catbrier, which is my most detested something. The flower I love most for its multiple beautiful stages is the hydrangea. From the dead-but-not-dead winter canes, from which green leaves directly sprout in the spring; to its beautiful green, gradually morphing to pink/blue/purple long-lasting-if-you-keep-it-watered summer bloom; to the faded fall color that dries in the house for winter beauty, it is a most amazing plant.

I have been wondering if the toad lily is going to bloom this year--I can't remember its estimated time of arrival. A couple week's ago I notice buds. I check it out again, not blooming yet. Something to anticipate; maybe next week, or the next. I pull more marigolds; they are mostly gone now. Only the black eyes of the black-eyed Susans remain. The zinnias, vinca, and that Annual I Can't Remember the Name Of are blooming like they have no intention of stopping. Ever. The late-planted lantana has finally taken off and the Mexican petunia that struggled this year is blooming. I even spotted some morning glories this week. I keep accidentally pulling the vines with the ivy; I am pleased by their tenacity. The volunteer cosmos just keeps coming. And the sedum that I didn't remember having a bloom is lovely.

I confess I have been lonely this week. Maybe it was the two days and an evening with people at the staff retreat that makes my beautiful home feel temporarily empty. Maybe it's the rain, which I love, but which raises a yearning for a snuggle-buddy. Maybe it's watching the season-opening Grey's Anatomy and Christina's reference to Meredith as her "person" and feeling like my persons have all faded away, and I will never have one again. Being in what I thought would be a garden in full-out retreat, but isn't, reminds me to never say never. Everything is seasonal. The person-drought will come to a close when it's time; and probably when I least expect it.

Autumn. I exchange my spring/summer porch decor for the autumn/winter version. I welcome fall, which will come into fullness in its time. I am glad to cycle along with the seasons. They come, they move on, they return. All is as it is ordained.

Round and Round and Round and Round

Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad,
But that doesn't matter at all
Take it from me, there's still gonna be
A summer, a winter, a spring and a fall.
The planet spins, and the world goes 'round
And 'round and 'round and 'round and 'round

(Apologies to the lyricist for scrambling the verses.)

Circles. All of life is made of circles and cycles. In this country, of course, we celebrate the beginning of a new year--a new circle--on January first. My soul year, though, begins with Lent, which coincides more closely with the garden year. Since I bought this house and its old neglected gardens, (I first saw it on Ash Wednesday and moved in on Palm Sunday), I began to pay attention to my own cycles. It is this time of year when I look inside myself and gather energy for whatever is coming; when I begin preparing with the garden for a return to life. I have tried to be a summer person; but it is spring when it is all happening; when my soul and the garden are full of excitement at what is happening now, with hope for what is coming next, and with sure knowledge that there is something to be learned. The garden is my teacher.

This year Lent is late; Ash Wednesday is still a week and a half away--later than it has been since I began learning from the garden. But the garden isn't waiting. And neither am I. Just as Lent doesn’t explode onto the scene with the razzle-dazzle of the resurrection, we have to wait for spring and summer for the garden to burst into the fullness of its bloom and potential. Lent, in the garden and in the soul, sneaks in quietly; begging to be observed and reflected upon, but with patient introspection. These are teasing weeks: cold then warm then cold again; still more darkness than light. So some days, when I feel my winter inwardness ready to bust out, and other days when I turn back, I don't despair. Easter is not here yet. But there is plenty happening.

In the garden my Lenten Rose is Crazy With Bloom. I count twenty buds and blooms this weekend, compared to four last week and two last year, and none the year before that. I love the Lenten Rose. It is a plant I was not familiar with until I began my love affair with the garden and started observant walking in my neighborhood. Its foliage remains green through all the seasons, and it blooms during Lent. The dusty deep purple then green then yellow flowers are not a showy burst of color, and they hide under the leaves; but like Lent, it is there for those who are looking for subtle change, for a slow coming out from winter, for the first small sign of resurrection.

Evidence of spring can be seen everywhere. Daffodils and camellias are blooming. Cherry trees in the Village appear this week and light up the gray skies. (Well, the skies haven't been gray much, but they need to be. Rain is in short supply.) The more reticent trees have just a hint of color. But not all the evidence can be appreciated with a drive-by. It is much too subtle. The vinca minor ground cover I planted two years ago has its first periwinkle bloom; I don't notice until I walk up close. The pink feathers of the lorapetalum have opened. The dogwood has buds, and the tight green and purple hydrangea buds of last week are opening into green. The weeping Japanese maple I planted last year has new green branches and tiny pink leaf buds. The sea oats and guara are sprouting from the ground, but I have to peer closely to see it. And, when I brush aside the leaf mulch, I discover purple sprouts of the bleeding heart. But it's not time for everything. There is no sign of the Purple Heart, the hostas, or the peony. I claw through the mulch and check the banana tree. Nothing. I cover it back up. It is still February.

I planned for a Lenten practice this year, but I haven't waited for the liturgical year Lent to begin. I am following my own cycle. I rise early and sit on the deck with my coffee. A cardinal sits in a nearby branch this week and sings for a mate. And each morning a hawk, glides from tree tops across the street into the trees at the back of my yard. I watch it sitting up there. A few minutes later it flies back to the across-the-road trees with building materials its mouth. On Friday it is accompanied by another hawk--its mate perhaps?--and they both return bearing twigs. Preparing. We are all preparing for what comes next.

I have not enjoyed so much the cycle of the box elder bug. They came inside this year, and I have read more than I ever needed to know about the bug's life. They are completely harmless: they do not bite or carry disease, they do not harm plants or eat buildings. They come inside to get out of the cold, and when it gets warm they gravitate to warm places (like my southern exposure, upstairs window) trying to get outside. Though the literature says they do not reproduce inside, and they only live for a few days, it leaves me puzzled as to why they continued to inhabit my window all winter. The literature doesn’t say this, but they are stupid--or maybe just sluggish. They can fly, but they don't; they just let me have my way with them. I probably could open the window and let them escape--since that's what they want; but instead I swat their short lives even shorter and fill the waste basket with their tiny carcasses. At least they are not the ladybugs that congregate in my mother’s sunny windows; they would be hard to kill, what with being so cute and their children burning and all. This week they are all but gone in the house, but hatching--and flying--outside. I can’t like them, but what are they hurting.

Circles and cycles. They don't always follow a lateral line. Take the Crazy With Bloom Lenten Rose. It is in an upward spiral. As are several of the plants I have put in the ground that are strengthening as they become established. Older plants, though, are spiraling downward as they come to the end of their lives. Bulbs planted in the sun, become shaded as other plants grow over them, and experience a failure to bloom. (I have one of those random remembrances this morning of practicing lateral spirals in the long rectangular Palmer Method penmanship books. Do students still learn penmanship? Obviously not. Cursive writing has become a lost art.) I have experienced all the spirals. I think I am in an upward one now. It is opened-ended; I'm not sure where it is headed; or if there is even a destination in our spirals. But upward feels good.

I planted two Euphorbia in one of the first gardens I renovated. I love the name. One of the evergreen plants is doing very well and the other--only two feet away but with just a bit less sunlight--has struggled in a downward spiral. I transplant it this week to a sunnier spot. Sometimes we must transplant ourselves. What might have worked for a while, or might work for someone else, is not so much what we come to need. Lent and early spring are time to pay attention to that. We can see better when there is not so much "noise." Like in the garden, I watch and listen more intensely for what is coming for myself. What needs to be transplanted; what needs to be replaced. I begin opening up to possibility. As I wait for the warmth and the light to come to stay and for the more frantic pace of planting, weeding, and watering to begin, I prepare the garden and myself for another season of growth. We are getting ready, my bloom and I.

May Sarton said, "In the garden the door is always open in to the holy--growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle..." Sometimes our soul circles are longer than the garden cycles; some are not contained in a single year, and that makes them easy to overlook. If it has worked for several years, why is it suddenly not working? The truth is, it's not sudden, it just takes time coming to light. More than at any other season, I feel most like a participant in the divine act of creation this time of year. I embrace life more fully as I tune into my cycles. I choose what I want to cut away and what I want to nurture. I dig deep into the soil, enriching it to make it fertile to sustain whatever I decide to plant. I listen, I watch, I start the work. I revel in the beauty, the mystery, and the challenge of my soul garden.