Transplanting the Foxglove

The foxglove, which remains above ground through the winter, resurrected this spring into a robust doubled-in-size specimen of good health. As did the weeping Japanese maple I planted behind it the spring after I put the foxglove in the ground. It is no longer a good home for the foxglove. There won't be room for the stalk. So last Sunday I move it to an empty space across the flagstone path. I also transplant one of the many ostrich fern babies--one that popped up under the now-enormous Autumn Brilliance fern. And then there is the heart-leaf bergenia. Another above ground winterer in my garden. It has not bloomed since I planted it, but this spring it has birthed a new plant. I keep thinking maybe this year it will bloom. I don't know what to do with it; so I let it be.

Monday morning the foxglove sprawls limply on the ground, its leaves like lettuce that stayed in the refrigerator drawer for too many weeks. I've killed it, I think, and it was so beautiful. The hole wasn't deep enough or wide enough; the dirt too hard; I didn't add enough compost. I didn't take enough time to prepare the soil to receive it. I must have done something wrong. I am sad. The fern, on the other hand, looks like it has come fresh from the beauty parlor; not a hair out of place. Tuesday, Wednesday: limp foxglove, unfazed fern. But then, slowly slowly, the foxglove starts to perk up. I keep watering it and talking to it. Encouraging it to come back in its own time. Being patient with it. And it does. Today, except for a few leaves on the bottom, it is itself again. Hopefully a happier, healthier self, with room to stretch. But I will have to wait some more to know that.

I have been reading the blog of one of last summer's writing camp classmates. Her husband is undergoing a stem cell transplant. The ultimate transplant. With a stem cell transplant the body has to come as close as physically possible to death; then, at the last moment--the exact right time--the new cells are introduced. And then the really hard part starts. Waiting and hoping and praying. Watching her husband wilt down until he is unrecognizable. Then waiting some more to see if the cells will take over his body and learn their new home and find nourishment and bring him to new life.

The fern, the bergenia, the foxglove. Some people move around in their lives with ease, seemingly oblivious to change; knowing how to seek out the nourishment they need to thrive, never missing a beat. Others stay put because the foliage is healthy; and try not to be concerned that there is no bloom. Still others, recognizing an inability to grow and bloom where they are, cautiously take the leap, but transition slowly, finding it difficult to let go of what was and bloom into what is now and next. We leave the place we have filled up, and move on to empty space that is waiting for new life to inhabit it. It takes us longer to find our way and stretch our roots deep into the soil. We are patient with ourselves...or try to be.

Yesterday, between rain showers, I plant zinnia and sunflower seeds. In this instant society, I love planting seeds. I push them out of sight and spread the soil back over them. Deferred gratification. In a few days they will sprout, and then will come the challenge of distinguishing them from weeds. It's a good excuse not to pull weeds until I can be sure what I am pulling.

The garden is in its spring prime. The weekend rain, which follows a long dry spell, will revive the flagging pansies. The second round of snapdragons--the tall ones I didn't know I planted--have exploded open. I pick the first snap peas and a few leaves of spinach for my weekly garden pasta. Exciting! My first attempt at both. The roses are beautiful, but for one bush that has no buds. The first purple heart bloom delights me and the last bleeding hearts bid adieu to early spring. Pincushion flower, yarrow, and candytuft add their bling in the sun garden. And mid-week, here is the too-crazy-to-not-believe-in-God passion flower.

My mother and sisters visited last weekend (hence no blog post). We are a family of transplants. My mother left her childhood Tennessee for Washington (with my mid-west father). My sisters and I left the west coast and transplanted ourselves on the east coast. My younger sister and my daughter have left the right and replanted themselves on the left again. My son left the North Carolina Piedmont in favor of the mountains. We are a family of curiosity. What if... Perhaps curiosity is the forerunner of change. I wondered if the foxglove would be happier in a new space, if its roots would find the nourishment it needed to reconnect with the earth in its new home. The only way to know is to give it the chance. Perhaps it will be too traumatized to bloom this year. But I am betting that in the long run, it will thrive.

Shellfish

It might be more appropriate to title a blog post on Easter Sunday something having to do with new life, or resurrection, or something equally Eastery. And crustaceans do not apply. But shrimp are not really what's on my mind.

I have frequently referred to, and thought of, myself as selfish. I crave solitude. I love silence. I like solo activities like writing, walking, reading, gardening. I don’t volunteer. I don’t join clubs or book groups. I don’t hesitate to say “no” to invitations, even from friends, when it intrudes on my plans with myself. (I am trying to get better on that last--I need and love my friends.) I feel bad about my selfishness. Both of my sisters and my mother are generous women; what, I wonder, happened to that gene in me? My mother has always put others ahead of herself and her needs. I daresay she has never even honestly asked herself if that is what she needs.

Then, yesterday, I read Julia Cameron’s thoughts on the topic (Walking in this World). "We get our lives wrong because we get our questions wrong. We get our questions wrong because we have been raised in a culture that is punishing to the forms of freedom necessary for artists to flourish. These freedoms are the ones that allow us to be a little less nice so that we can be a little more genuine... It is my considered opinion that most creative people are actually too selfless... 'Selfish enough' gives us the self for self-expression... For an artist, being too virtuous is no virtue at all. It is destructive and counterproductive."

Wow. I have a hard time thinking of myself as an artist or a writer. I do consider myself creative, however. And I know when I don't have time to create, I am out-of-sorts. I can't squeeze it in between life and life's activities. It is life to me. (And maybe someday I can call myself an artist or writer. For now I am grateful to others who name it for me.)

I am so glad there are people in this world whose passions revolve around improving quality of life for other people. They are the heroes of the earth. Can I let it be okay that I am not that selfless? And could I start by not referring to myself with a word I consider a "bad person" word? Not selfish, in touch with my inner self. Sharing myself in a way tuned in to that inner me.

On Maundy Thursday,  at Pullen's evening service, I read the Matthew text about Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane, as I have for several years now. I know that people who have a need to categorize people have figured out what Jesus' Myers Briggs Inventory letters are. It doesn't really matter to me. If he was an introvert, he had highly evolved extrovert skills. If he was an extrovert, he was in tune with his need for solitude. I love this text, Jesus is so human in it. He is angry. He is afraid. He wants his life to go in another way, and he asks that it be so. And he accepts who he is. He asks his friends for "me time." In that moment, he is not there for them, he is taking care of his own needs. Did that make him selfish?

The MT service at Pullen includes foot-washing. Maundy meaning mandate, and Jesus mandating the importance of the symbolic act of foot-washing. I was honored to wash the feet of someone who had until this week, held back from this ritual. He told me later that he was prepared for the gift of washing my feet--the humble servant part--but he was surprised by the pleasure of receiving. I think many of us think it's selfish to enjoy receiving gifts. Begone with that idea, I say. I have suggested to my mother that if she can't bring herself to ask for what she needs, think of the people she is depriving of the opportunity to give. Better, though, to just sit back and allow oneself to be ministered to. And that includes ministering to oneself.

Lent is my season. I recognized that several years ago. I relish the quiet and introspection that the spiritual season asks of us. And I love being in the garden in the cold, when everything in the natural world is happening out of sight. And then slowly and quietly life sneaks back in. If we are dancing about the garden, we miss it. It is when we are quietly watching and waiting that we begin to notice a sprout here, a bud there. A bird song piercing the quiet, and the answering call from a distant roost.

New life happens for me at the end of Lent, again and again. It is, at first glance, coincidental and uncanny. But really it is not. It is my season. It is synchronicity. It is my self in touch with my world.

And now it is Easter. New life. Time to go back out. I wept through a singing of "In the Garden" this morning. Then went out and bought the garden a gift. A calla lily. As it turns out, a calla lily is neither a calla nor a lily. And I am not a shellfish. I am off to the garden. Alleluia!

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And he walks with me and he talks with me

And he tells me I am his own

And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Measuring Marigolds

Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds.
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are.

It was an early Schaum or Fletcher Method piano lesson. I think of it every time I see an inch worm measuring the garden. Apparently there is a bumper crop this year, dropping and hanging from the trees; a gift of the warm winter. A whole lotta measuring going on.

A whole lot of growing going on, too. It's too much outpouring for the worms to keep up. The giant hosta has spent the last three weeks growing its tight leaves taller; and suddenly overnight this week, they begin unfurling. The banana leaves are waving in the breeze and the iris are opening in all their complexity. The evergreen Autumn Brilliance fern is going crazy with its embryonic new growth, and the Ostrich fern gets taller before my eyes. The roses are budding, the salvia is blooming, the feathery tiarella is open atop its slender stalk. The Japanese maple that I rescued from smothered oblivion, rises scarlet and triumphant above the gardenia.


The trees that surround the back yard are clothed in spring green against Carolina blue skies, with subtle purple wisteria hanging high in the branches. I know the wisteria is not good for the trees, but it is beautiful. I have certainly engaged in things beautiful that weren't good for me; but to have not had the connection would have left me less the person that I am. So I enjoy the brief wisteria season. As I sit under the dogwood, its Easter white blooms giving way to green leaves, a ballet of baby moths rises in a choreographed cloud from the grass.

I spend last weekend pulling weeds. I have said before that I enjoy pulling weeds, making space in the garden. Most of all I love the surprise of uncovering the perennials hiding under the weeds: the Mexican petunia, the gaura, the balloon flower. I pull new growth English ivy every once in a while. Its shiny green new leaves are a reminder in stark contrast of the mountains of dark leaves and hairy vines I pulled five years ago, and four, that was the beginning of the restoration of the garden and the healing of my heart. Like the garden, I am a different being now; as I healed the garden, the garden healed me.

Carpenter bees are at work under the deck rail. I don't know what to do about them. Unlike termites, they are harmless to the structure--at least in the deck rail where I observe them. They don't consume wood; they merely drill a beautiful, near-perfectly round half-inch hole in which to lay their eggs; the female then partitions it to suit her (genius). They are big and bumbly and loud; but the males don't sting, the females rarely. They don't party, but are seen in the singular--much like me. The babies don't stick around. The riddance method is distasteful to me: fill the hole with caulk with the bee inside. They have a right to be, and I am going to let them.

It is a Smudge weekend. A return to the vet on Friday shows her glucose skyrocketing and her weight dropping dangerously. We are back to twice daily insulin injections. It was a nice vacation. Yesterday, while sweeping, I find one of her teeth on the floor. I thought several weeks ago something wasn't right with that tooth. She doesn't seem to be bothered by its loss; most likely she is better off without it, as we all are when something is poking uncomfortably. Both events are reminders that she is aging; and that one day--like dear Santi who said goodbye to her beloved Bella Dona this week--another loss will just about break my heart. Yesterday she brings me a dead robin, as if to tell me she's still feisty and strong. No goodbyes just yet. 

A thunderstorm rumbles through in the night. It reverberates in the distance, rolling slowly closer and louder; like a freight train crescendoing up the track; its continuous, resonant echo coming, coming, coming. The rain adds its patter on the roof, the number of drops bouncing off the shingles doubling and tripling every few moments. Weaving through the percussion, a siren whines; closer, closer, closer. After many long minutes the climax arrives: booming bass, pounding rain and hail, piercing siren. It passes without pause and decrescendos to the north; going, going, going.

Had I awoken only to the storm at it height; should I pay attention to the garden only at its peak; had I not had to pull ivy in order to find the garden; if I look only at the highlights of my living, I miss the journey. And the journey is everything. Personally, I think the inch worm does see every beautiful detail of the marigold as it measures it. 

Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment. 

~Ellis Peters

Setting Intentions: Status Update

“Set an intention for your yoga practice today,” says the Not-Julie yoga sub at the beginning of Friday practice. My intention, I thought, is to not let your voice annoy me. I am judgmental. I will just own that. I have been called provincial by a former loved one, which seems to me is sort of another word for judgmental, with me being the province.

Here we are nearing the end of Lent and it is a good time to renew intentions set for the new year. If only I could remember what they were. I was going to

greet every day with five half-sun salutations. I forgot for the entire month of January; but since then I have done very well. And I was going to get back to Wednesday weight machines at the Y; I have not done well with that. Since the time changed I have not gotten to the cemetery for the sunrise very often; and consequently I have not been writing and posting One Sentence Mornings.

And then there is my One Little Word. I did the first month's assignment with enthusiasm, and waited impatiently for January to end so I could get the next assignment. I was less enthusiastic about February, and finally, just before month's-end, I figured out my own tweak to the assignment and finished it just before March's instruction came. And I don't like March, either. It feels too small--though small was the point. The instructor's experience has been that 
March is a month when participants lose interest, so she purposely made the exercise humble. But, I thought, small isn't working for me right now; I need BIG, so I wasn't challenged and I have not been purposeful. I see now, though, that the month has been chock full of small happenings involving my word, even though I did not write them down and set an intention to make them happen. I am a list maker, and I often add things to my list after I do them and mark them off so it doesn't appear that nothing has been happening. Which makes it a list of accomplishments rather than intentions. So my OLW in March will be an accounting of achievements without premeditation. Sometimes our work comes from deep within and our brains are the last to know.

I have been cleaning out closets and drawers and cupboards for the past several weeks. Every so often I get tired of things hanging around that are of no use nor value to me. I have never liked clutter. (Well, not for a really long time--since the clothes strung around the bedroom teenage years.) It's another bit of my judgmental personality when it comes to other people's homes, too. I can let it be okay, if it works for them (which I doubt), but I don't know how they can live in it. No, I am not OCD, I just like freedom from the detritus of life that doesn't add value. And I start thinking about what within me needs to be cleaned out. And what needs to make its way in.

Weeds in the garden don't add value. And the warm days and the plenitude of rain this week have resulted in a lot of weeds that need to be pulled. If it stops storming long enough. Perhaps today. Yesterday I run out of the house between showers to plant vegetables. Red peppers, spinach, yellow squash (which I realize now is the composted mystery plant growing in my birdbath planter), and grape tomatoes join the Brussels sprouts and snap peas.

What I notice most in the garden this week is the exchange of individual flowers that pop up victoriously through the hard ground and the cold of early spring, for the lavish clumps of color that are the hallmark of the current warmth and wet. March showers bring March flowers; the 2012 southern version of the traditional premise. The last of the hostas that I have been watching for, also make their appearance this week.

Moles, which couldn’t dig through the yard last summer due to extreme heat and hard earth, are making up for lost ground these warm, wet weeks. Greg Fischel shows proof on the weather trivia this week that there is no precedent for warmest winters leading to hottest summers. Uh huh. What about warmest winters followed by warmest springs? Then what is summer like historically? Even though we are only five days into spring, I am fighting turning on the AC at night; I can generally tough out it well into May.

On the upside of the weather (which honestly I have loved except for the night heat and the open windows that give entrance to the clouds of pollen) is relaxing on the patio with Smudge and the birds after work, enjoying my book and wine. Watching plants growing at rocket speed. Middle-of-the-night thunderstorms, which I love. Early morning fog. And a rainbow! Actually, a double one. Rainbows are so rare here. I just happen to be out of the office on Tuesday and there it is--full arch, all seven colors. A reminder of the intention of the One Who is More; which reminds me of mine. And it evokes in me the importance of setting intentions, so the swiftly flying weeks don't pass unnoticed and uncounted for. And what I have learned about intention-setting is to set them just beyond comfortable. I am looking forward to April's intentions...or accomplishments.

Kaleidoscope Eyes

I love kaleidoscopes, from the cardboard cylinders with bits of plastic in the end that were birthday party favors and Christmas stocking leavings when I was small, to the multi-hundred dollar polished wood ones on stands with pieces of colored crystal that mix when the end is turned and fall into place when the twisting stops. My favorites, though, are those with clear prisms in the end that make patterns of whatever it is turned toward.  

This is a week of meandering, twisting experiences. Nothing seems to fit together. So much so that yesterday I don't think this post will have a theme. But that is what kaleidoscopes are: every movement changes the picture. Perhaps that is what Lent is about, waiting and watching for whatever comes. Life doesn’t always come together in a nicely wrapped tidy package; the days don't always fall into a theme.

Change is in the air and I feel unsettled, uncertain, unprepared. Fearful. Panicked. I read this on Saturday from Walking in This World, by Julia Cameron, and it helps: "If you are panicked, tell yourself, ‘Ah! Good sign: I am getting unstuck.'" You have to do some twisting before the glass settles into place; the panic transforming to excitement at the venture.

Here in the south this week, it is full blown spring (and much too warm for me). I observe the twists of the kaleidoscope. Each night it turns, and the next morning the scene is different.

The dogwood blossoms move from barely opening and invisible from the deck at the beginning of the week, to nearly fully busted out with the beginnings of leaves on the branches at the end. The lawn is full of buttercups  (well, yellow flowers) and violets and the tiny blue flower of the otherwise despicable carpet weed. Or maybe the carpet weed is the white flower and the blue another creeper. At any rate, the blue and the white are co-conspirators in the plot to take over the garden. (They have already won in the yard. I don't care.) I pull them by the handful, without gloves as usual and with the resulting splinters and dirt under my nails. I love the wild phlox, which pops up everywhere bringing bright spots to areas not yet in bloom.

The Japanese painted fern, the purple heart, and the Jacob's Ladder increase in girth daily. The bleeding heart has teeny half-inch hearts on the new plant; I don't remember seeing them on the immature plant in years past. These plants are clearly loving the warmth more than I am. The Japanese weeping maple and the more ordinary Japanese maples have transformed from bud to wispy emerging leaves to nearly fully open. The feathery loropetalum gets more and more thick with pink.

The banana leaves are climbing all in and over each other to unfurl. I am fascinated by these triplets born together, and struggling now to individuate.

The Rose of Sharon, the one here that I transplanted as a tiny seedling from the other side of the yard, contains the old side-by-side with the new. I ponder that, how even as we change and grow, we keep some parts of who we have been with us always, the new coming out of the old like this year's banana plant; and some pieces of ourselves, like the Rose of Sharon, we shed only as the new crowds it out. Other plants become completely empty, waiting barren through the winter for the new growth to emerge. We are all of these.

There will be many tall red papery poppies this year. Invasive, but so much fun and full of good cheer. This week, though, their beauty is in the holding of raindrops that sparkle like the glass at the end of the kaleidoscope.

I am in the cemetery on Saturday for both the sunrise after the early fog, and the sunset. I am honored to share this special place with my northern-transplant friend who has not been before. There are several rainy nights this week (and a fabulous thunderstorm and pouring rain last night), and I cherish the early morning damp air and the raindrops clinging to the plants.

I sit on the deck with wine and camera and wait for birds at the feeder. I do love cardinals. I Google them for facts and learn that they do not live in the Pacific Northwest (sad), and that they mate for life. Another website puts that last bit in perspective: "Cardinals mate for life; which sound like they spend decades of bliss together until they retire to some Cardinal condo in the [mountains]. Truth is a cardinal’s life expectancy isn't much longer than a year." However, you have to love this: Most female birds are silent, while the males expose themselves and announce their territory to the world. A truly unique thing about cardinals is that both sexes sing and both sound pretty much the same, and claim their joint territory.

Friday I take Smudge, my five-year-diabetic cat, and her three-pounds-lighter svelte body to the vet for a glucose curve, and she is declared in remission. No more insulin for now. I feel like such a good mom. I enjoy her pleasure in the sun and the new bug life in the garden.

There is a new employee at work, and I spend some time with her this week going over the financial details of her job (payroll specifically). She asks a question about sabbatical time that ministerial staff can take after three years. Administrative staff gets no such thing, and it gets me thinking about what I would do with an all expenses paid period of time to look at the world through different eyes. What would I point my kaleidoscope toward; what would I like my twist to settle into? What if I had a whole year?

Julia Cameron: "We cast our dreams and desires ahead of us, and as we move toward them, their content takes on solidity... A symphony moves both through and ahead of a composer. As he [she] moves toward it, it moves toward him [her]... As we commit to our dreams, something benevolent commits back." I am daring to dream.

The thing about kaleidoscopes is they don't work in the dark. If you hold yours up to the light and twist the end, where does the glass settle for you? Or maybe you have the kind without the colored glass; perhaps you need to look at what's already there and see how the pattern can change if you point in a new direction and look with different eyes. I am turning mine this Lent; pointing, dreaming, looking, watching, waiting.