Anticipating Springtime

Galanthus elwesii.

This past weekend I worked outside for a few hours. There is much debris yet to pick up before the daffodils fully emerge from the ground and I've more pruning to do.

The temperatures were chilly, but it was sunny, and the back garden looks a bit better now thanks to the effort.

Container ships waiting near the mouth of the Columbia River to be driven over the Columbia Bar by one of the bar pilots. It's dangerous work and from this restaurant window we can watch as the pilots are escorted out to the vessels. 

The weekend before that we were able to escape for an extended mini-vacation—but I had to take my work along with me. 

I worked a lot, but we somehow found the time to visit my maternal grandmother in Aberdeen (WA) one day, and we went to Astoria (OR) the day beforehand. 

It's rarely this clear and sunny during January so I took John up to the Astoria Column. (It is quite a landmark and I was surprised when he told me he'd never been there.) The views were breathtaking that day.

Looking southward (sort of) you see Youngs Bay. This is one of my all-time favorite views. Somehow, it always appears to me to look a bit like a painting.

Anticipating springtime. 

Back at the house in Portland, life continues to change and we're all adapting to the new vitality being breathed into our home. John is a lot of fun and has his own ways about him. He's a special man to have moved into a place that is so mine, but we're working to make it his too.

The most interesting adaptation we're currently going through is that the youngest cat (the partially feral one) is moving in upstairs. As she has aged, she has changed. It has been interesting to observe her as she's gone through a lot these past few years. Often, I find her hiding in plants like this just staring at me as I work. I stare back at her and she looks away. I suppose she is working too. I don't really know for certain. She observes the garden for hours on end.

There have been some major territorial adjustments but the two female cats are respecting one another for the first time. (Maurice goes wherever he wants. It's best that way—but nowadays he limps and doesn't move around nearly as much.)

Mona tends to sit on furniture more and more and the ground less. 

Indoors, Mona likes to be around the plants because she is used to living under them during the outdoor half of her year. She seeks them out in her daily routine.

She's anticipating spring and follows me outdoors to spend time with me as I work. I never dreamed she'd shadow me so much. She is very much a loner cat but she's changing. I'm honored but it's more about her than me.

John is getting to know her more as well. He rarely saw her before but now they see one another everyday and he's able to spend time petting her.

When I work indoors—writing and cooking as a ghostblogger for a food blog—she sits near my feet.

This is a big change for me. The other two cats are too old now to remain so alert to my movements all day. Maurice used to always be by my side, but now it's Mona. This is a change. 

Sedum spathulifolium.

Life is still a bit uncertain for me professionally as I try to manage working and serious chronic health issues. I miss my time spent at home, but it was very difficult for me to be living without career fulfillment. I grew tired of struggling to get by, and of working so hard to stay afloat, but it has been a humbling experience. I'm grateful.

The garden is seen differently now, but I'm at least seeing it again. The thought of losing it in the divorce made the sight of it excruciatingly painful. I now deeply admire those others who've gone through that kind of dissolution. I'm not ready to move on from here, but my time will come. Until then, I want to see my dreams and plans come to life outside.

I miss my garden though because I work a lot now and in order to be able to work I need to exercise a lot to keep the pain under control. The absolute pleasure and peace gardening gave me is now at odds with the reality of living a real life, but I am learning how to cope. It is an opportunity I never was given. I'm reintegrating gardening and am starting seeds again. I'm determined that this place will be reborn again soon.

Lewisia columbiana ssp. rupicola.

That's why I'm set to rebuild it. I've been pulling the garden alongside me during the journey as I've been rebuilding myself during these past two years. As time has passed, and as I've struggle with its passage, how could I not think of the garden?

Freelance writing work is not easy to find and I was blessed with my current job. It's amazing and I know it's the right thing for me to be doing. Being a part-time caregiver is becoming more difficult though. I'm growing to the point now where I want to be away from illness. I live in both worlds, but I still want to belong to the living for a bit longer. I know exactly what I have to look forward to in the future, but right now, it's my time.

It took the experience of a difficult client telling me repeatedly that I was there to provide her comfort and to take care of her needs. She repeatedly told me I was doing a poor job. Something inside of me rose up and rebelled. I'm in control of my own comfort and needs right now and I'm going to keep making better and more informed decisions so that I will land in a better place soon. I also realized that I was a damned good caregiver. She simply wasn't the right client for me.

I'm growing in ways I wasn't able to grow.

I'm carving out more time to write too. I cannot wait to see what publishing some of my own work will do for me as a person. It's all I ever wanted out of life and it's accomplishable now. Part of me will be at peace soon after settling that score.

Writing more—more than anything else—will heal some large wounds for me.

I've always been a writer at heart who just so happens to garden and love plants.

Lastly, as I go along plotting all these things out, my mind continues to go in and out of the garden and my plans for it—I mean our plans for it.

I'm currently sorting things around the house and am getting rid of old gardening books and other pieces of junk and this vintage window box combination really struck me the other day. I tossed the book but I kept this image from it.

This is the tangled and complicated kind of beauty I admire most. The round and tender leaves of a nasturtium are the last thing I'd imagine paired with a rattail cactus. One plant grows with ease in one season, while the other is an incredibly mature specimen plant—perfect example of the passage of time in the garden.

Spring is coming soon and I guess I'm not the gardening fraud I feel like I've become due to these past two years or so of major life changes and transitions. I'm going to Italy and I will be looking at a lot of plants. There hopefully will be a beautiful one-year wedding anniversary celebration to plan. There are more plans for the future than I can mention. I'm not necessarily the specimen plant I wanted to become. I've accepted that maybe sometimes I'm going to be the annual plant with great growth and vigor put on during one season. Or, it's baroque and complicated and like everyone else I'm everything at once and far less interesting or important than I imagine myself to be and then I just don't matter and I drift back with my eyelids shut to a sunny day in the summertime where all I can hear is the noise from the city streets, or waves from the Pacific Ocean, and I remember the sound of my grandma's trowel in the dirt beside me as I doze off in the lounge chair.

Yes, I'm anticipating springtime too and the calm nothingness brought on by spontaneous moments of profundity caught in nature and in the garden. Maybe that's what the feral cat is anticipating too.  

Wordless Wednesday: From the Darkness of Winter

An Autumn Field Report

My life feels like it's on fire right now—but my house looks like it thanks to the annual display put on by the Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia). 

While my life takes off, I'm too busy to even sit and consider what'll happen to me now if I swell up. It took me a long time, and it took a lot of searching and self-acceptance, but finally, I seem to have a professional life and a work schedule I not only can manage, but I've set myself up to succeed and it feels so much better. 

The garden is no longer neglected. In my mind, it's on hold. It's slowly starting up again (really coming to life for the first time) and I'm introducing John to it little by little.

His first unique seed experience was this 'Cruel' vine seed head (Araujia sericifera). It's the only one produced by this non-hardy vine that has survived a few too many winters here in Oregon. I grew if from seed. To see it set seed after several years is very exciting to me.

The vine is in front of the house and isn't really that special. It chokes out all that gets in its way and I was getting tired of its unneighborly behavior. Then it bloomed rows of small, pretty white fragrant flowers and my dislike (aka hatred) for the plant relented.

I am a proud mama now. I can't kill my baby. I've got to collect its seeds!

The small autumn-blooming Camellia 'Silver Dollar' is currently bursting with blooms. I appreciate and admire its restraint and grace. So many of the other garden plants are dressed up like painted ladies this time of year. I love the little touch of class this plant offers my eyes.

The Amsonia I grew from seed a few years ago is looking beautiful next to this Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides)—speaking of painted ladies!

Life in the house and garden is changing though. Our family has changed and I'm working more and more outside of the house now.

Maurice the Cat is ever the trooper and despite his age, arthritic pain, and weight problem, he's soldiering on and has enjoyed every last bit of sunshine he can grasp in his polydactyl paws.

Cats do not like change and only now are they trusting that their lives are not being tossed hither and thither.

The leaves are changing and falling. The air is crisp and tonight we may have some frosty temps in the Portland metro area.

It's a beautiful time of the year and I'm preparing again to participate in NaNoWriMo.

I'm writing a novel again in November—but unlike last year—this story is fully cooked and ready to go. I am also preparing to write many other things. Actually, I'm already doing so. It's time. I am well enough now.

There is still some physical recovery to do. A decade of illness is not easy to repair. I need to lose more weight. My blood pressure and heart need a break. I've lost a lot of weight and have continued to regain and build muscle but my body needs to be leaner and meaner. I am caring for me now and it feels good too.

I will do all of these things that I've set out to do now. That's what I do. That's what I've always done. It's good to be me again.

I'm working as a caregiver now, and I work all kinds of odd shifts with the elderly and those in hospice.

Illness has prepared me for this and I'm comfortable and confident with what I'm doing.

It's not a forever job, but for now, I'm enjoying the pleasure of working hard and the opportunity of getting to know new and interesting people.

They've lived different lives than mine and we honor and respect one another as we work through basic daily tasks that have become increasingly more difficult for the clients. The adjustment has not been easy for me, but it's improving. I know what I'm doing and I know that I can help them.

It feels good.

There's also a new dog in the family. My mother-in-law picked up this little cutie recently and although I'm not a dog person, I like her a lot. She has made my mother-in-law very happy and I've enjoyed seeing that, but the whole adoption process led to John and I craving a kitten.

Between the two of us we have 5 cats. We do not need a kitten. (His two cats live with his mom and her new pup.) We just want one. Ugh.

This autumn we've talked a lot about eventually buying a place in the country near the ocean. I've thought about the garden it would have and what palate of plants I would pick. This is another project I'm working on right now.

I've never really designed a  project like this, but oddly, I'm ready and willing to accept the challenge.

This has led to me thinking a lot about my own design aesthetic. I never knew I had one but it runs through almost everything I do. It ties into the novel writing, so I'm a happily contained little mind now. Inside I am germinating.

There have been many meals and many recipes recently. John has been cooking new things, learning new techniques in the kitchen, and he's been shopping at farmer's markets. As for me, I'm in love with my Cauliflower (Brassica) 'Minaret'. Yes, I've been cooking too, but I've been enjoying all of John's food more. I'm proud of him. He's a great cook.

For me, food has become another job. This is a good thing—literally, a job! I'm still kind of in shock this even happened, but it did.

So, it's exciting to announce this publicly. Here goes: I've been hired to work as a ghost blogger for a food blogger. That is all I can say, since I am obviously a ghost blogger, but to say that the experience is thrilling is an understatement. I want to be a paid writer. I crave it. I need it. I would like to continue working as an editor too. With this opportunity, I will be able to do both of these things.

And from here it will only get better...

Lastly, I've returned to arranging flowers and that's been good for me during the times when I still feel chronic pain from either swelling or injuries I sustained years ago. I'm arranging plant material weekly in an effort to relieve stress and to be creative. It gets my juices flowing and it gives me a problem to solve. I relish that kind of thing.

The whole process brings a kind of value to my life that's irreplaceable.

It's still cleanup time in the garden—my garden: I'm still blogging, there are seeds to sow, I see a future garden to begin designing, and there are many words in the air. My mind has been swept and it is still a bit shady in there, but I see leaks of light and the words are in lines now that float and I can grasp their syntax.

Someday I will describe the mind of chronic pain to show how dull and slow it can become and how one can lose so many words. The feelings and thoughts were all inside of me but I couldn't get them out. I struggled. I was inarticulate for so many years.

It is difficult when the words come to me quickly now. I still feel as though I'm sitting behind the wheel of a fast car as the words pour out. I know that I am not yet as suave as I once was though, I'm rough, I repeat a lot. I could use better words—and I will.

But I will use them for my novel and it will have a garden and it will have plants and there will be so many other wonderful things. My many layers are peeling away now and as winter comes low over the horizon from the cold north I will let the chilling winds lay bare that which I want so badly to articulate but have yet been unable to do so. 

Wordless Wednesday: I giardini delle due donne

Climbing Monkshood (Aconitum episcopale) grown from seed.

Staghorn Fern (Platycerium) in its new home.

Pink Turtlehead (Chelone obliqua) grown from seed. Sadly the plant was eaten a bit this year.

The backyard.

Tradescantia 'Bridal Veil'.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis).

Fuchsia 'Celia Smedley'.

Unknown Rosa.

Unknown cabbage (Brassica). 

Notorious female feline.

Potted geraniums (Pelargonium), with St. Francis statuary, at the home of an Italian woman. 

Wordless Wednesday: Working In and Around the Willow Arbor

Begonia grandis and Tradescantia pallida 'Purpurea'. 

Neglected Festuca californica with a columnar apple tree and black cat. 

Tagetes erecta 'French Vanilla'. 

Cyclamen hederifolium. 

More apples from the tree.