never so beautiful as when you fall apart

in the neighborhood

Sure, I probably could have gotten a lot more done this weekend. Turns out that getting older actually does slow you down. Or, getting lazier makes it harder to do things.

Stayed up late last night, poring over the Friend's School Plant Sale catalog with my younger sister, each of us making wish-lists too long to remember, much less afford... How can you not get excited about something called Amorphophallus, or the Sapphire Tower? Monkshood, Masterwort, Toad lily, Batface... try one of those, or opt for something a little more straightforward, like Cook With Chicken, Makes Body Strong. So many things to grow, and to know... I fall in love with one little plant, so easily-- give me a couple hundred and I'm bound to get carried away...

Spent much of today getting to know my yard a little better, clearing out the dead stuff and taking stock. I've got a nice assortment of perennials here: peonies, daylilies, hyacinths, yarrow, lungwort, coreopsis, asters, irises, violets, others. There are a few little roses in the back, languishing near the fence behind the lilac (they will be moved). Out in front there's a sprawly juniper, a dogwood of some sort, a good-sized flowering crab and couple other little trees and shrubs which I have yet to identify.

Turned up a few auspicious finds today, including a couple nice polished agates and other stones, a no. 2 pencil, a handful of heavy-duty zip ties dropped by the wifi guy, a ginormous blue tarp and two perfectly serviceable canoe paddles. I've now acquired a rake, a fork and a little weeder thingy, none of which (sadly) meet my tool standards but one cannot travel back in time, alas. It's a start. Got to put my Felco pruners to work today, and so thankful to have them (gratitude, CM). Also realized with some excitement that I might now be able to justify getting that super nifty pack-down saw I've wanted...

Oh, yeah, and got a good deal via craigslist on a crapload--well, actually a box and four bags full--of Lilies of the Valley, which I shared with my sis. I still had enough to circle the lilac and border a wide corner near the front fence, and I hope to be taking in their sweetly intoxicating fragrance by my birthday, if all goes well.

Nice to be out working today, listening to the birdsong and the neighbor kids across the alley... glad for them, since it turns out I'm situated between Mr. Oddball (Silence of the Lambs? or Forrest Gump?) to the south, and Crazy Cat Lady to the north (hello, you're looking at me and I just waved at you! and what's with those shorts??) and even though both of them seem to be quite a bit more anti-social and nuts than I am, I might find myself sucked into some kind of vortex of lonely mediocrity if it weren't for the Ideal Young Minneapolitan Family across the alley. (Oh, wait.)

Well, anyway, the one thing I did not manage to do--well, okay, not counting the rest of that list I made this morning--was get the asparagus planted. I'm really at a loss about where it should go. Seems like it should just have a place, and I should be able to find it, but so far I'm stumped. Perhaps tomorrow.

Damn Tasty Bread Pudding (for one)

1 large and extremely stale piece of decent bread (not too dense), cubed, about 1 c
1 very small onion, diced (about 1/8 c)
1 small clove garlic, minced
3 cremini mushrooms, (halved and) sliced
3 good oily salty tasty black olives (kalamata, nicoise or the like), minced
pinch of rosemary
1-2 tbsp mild dry goat cheese (or maybe Swiss or dry white cheddar?), in tiny cubes
1 egg
2 tbsp milk (soy or cow)
salt and pepper
butter

Put the bread chunks in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and a couple tbsp milk, and dump it over the bread. In a small skillet, saute the onions in a bit of butter, with some salt, over heat high enough to brown them slightly. Add the mushrooms, garlic and rosemary, bit more salt and pepper, and saute until the mushrooms have cooked through. Add mushroom mixture, olives and cheese to bread bowl and mix it up a bit, then pack it into small buttered baking dish. If you don't have an adorable pint-size glass bread pan, use whatever else you've got, glass or metal. Bake at 350, covered, until the pudding puffs up and begins to turn golden, then uncover and bake until nicely browned. Turn onto a plate and serve with fork.

(Theoretically this recipe could be doubled, quadrupled, octupled, what have you... )

new morning

My body knows it hasn't stretched this way before, in this place, and then it hits me, not like a ton of bricks but almost like a warm gust of wind or a spray of rainbowed mist: I've been living here for just shy of six months now. Six months! In all that time I haven't pulled my arms back like this. I almost can't believe it.

Last night I curled up on the rug in the living room, snuggled up with a pile of pillows under my whisper-soft sleeping bag, and in two short hours I slept away so much fear and loss and worry that when I woke I felt I'd entered a new dimension. Lucid and changed, it scared me a little, maybe more. I'm through something.

For six months, I've been cocooned here. Four months have passed with my stereo sitting on the kitchen floor, acting as a sort of "coat-shrub". Close to two months since I got back from my trip. Almost two weeks since I saw the herbalist and the shift in vibration, the release of grief, the rush of sap through dry veins...

Spring is here, and I have a lot of work to do. I'm ready for it now.

this my tulip

lying in the gravel where i found you, pink and battered, splattered by muddy drops, dusty but not broken, wrapped around yourself, around me, what joy it is to find a blossom in the evening! and to bring you home

recent findings

Two boxes on my doorstep today, one hiding not at all inconspicuously under the doormat. A box of seeds, expected. Another, what? Forgotten. Asparagus crowns! Okay, right, so what am I supposed to do with these now? Guess I'll have to read up, do a bit of building, maybe some actual planting or something. Spring's been here for a while now, shouldn't have come as a surprise...

And Easter's come and gone, already, with nary an egg in sight, but there were a few other finds over the past weekend...

coneflowers

pasque flowers

delicacy

(tomatillo) husk

fuzzy unfurls

one year's growth (red elder)

red elder bud

tiny gardens

peach running

bees, underground (a whole colony of them, in the field past the Big Hill)

watercolors

split

chewed

fallen, above the dam

breaking ground

This evening I came home with a new shovel, cut a circle through the grass near the back fence and planted a root of the old rhubarb from the garden back home. Then I ate steak, and ice cream, and felt sort of perfectly at home for the first time, here. Now I'm going to sleep. More tomorrow.