on Sunday I spent an entirely pleasant few hours sitting in a camp chair with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. spent a bit of time looking around and breathing deeply. Snapping pictures from time to time but mostly I was spotting for J while he did this:
and this
and also this
With no prior experience and only a variety of you-tube videos for guidance an early learning mistake was the best of all way-showers. J had to dig the augur out manually. That gave me time to take pictures of places I love to document as they flow towards full leafing.
Hickories are the last to leaf. and also one of the most beautiful unfurling ballets branch-to-branch.
The familiar view expands with fresh life.
earlier in the day (at 7:30 a.m.) I set-out a bowl with three Iris flowers.
Here's the bowl at its alchemical mid-point. This is one of the most radiant and light soaked mother stocks I've had the honor of shaking to life. It's astounding to me what's been unfolding bowl by bowl. The summer season hasn't started and I've already harvested 11 essences.
***
On Monday we were meant to finish getting the fence post holes augured. Instead I spiked a fever and then had a most un-pretty meltdown due to a debilitating fibromyalgia flare-up that refused to let me push through it to the other side is how I think of it. I've had three flare-ups in the past two weeks. Feels like an entirely lateral shift from fleeting but mercilessly potent anxiety attacks of the previous few weeks.
J was okay about the tool going back with having only used it one day of the two he'd planned. Said using the powerful machine the day before 'took a toll' and as a result he was fine with the zen of digging all the rest of the holes - save one that will be difficult. There may be more problem-soiving needed between us as a result.
Look how she's growing! I will try to get a better shot of the branch canes which are hugely attractive to me. Kind of like bamboo at this stage. Spent yesterday doing nothing but read The Year of the Flood, plan what I hoped to be able to accomplish today in the outside world (I did), and watering the host of seedlings pictured below. Fall asleep about 6:30 in the evening. Slept through until 5:30. Got up and walked around just to see how my joints felt once in motion. I felt at 60% capacity and trusted I would renew even more energy and cellular nurturing over the coming days.
Right now I am accepting that part of what's involved in getting back into physical balance will involve re-setting my weird classic-teenage biorhythms. My physical/mechanical body had an ongoing conversation with both my soul and critical thinking brain. By day's end I'd replaced grim what if this means that and then that and that and that with a sense of optimism. Because:
Everything from my basement greenhouse is happy and we are in the throes of planting a little here and there. This evening J and I transplanted three clumps of red bee balm from the very edge of the transplant bed. It's being pushed out of the garden by a ground-cover(ing) veronica that ran wild at the old place. I did not bring any here on purpose! Took five years to appear and since then everything else is being pushed farther and farther into the grass. I worried the three bee balm colonies we ultimately relocated would be destroyed or seriously maimed by the fence process.
Just before twilight J dug troughs roughly a third deeper than necessary. I added lobster compost and J chopped it in the soil below the trough then remixed after adding the dug-up soil. We planted the first two with equal measure of care and firmness. As we worked J made ongoing note of the soil's superb condition. How free of root pieces and little stones it was. When we got to the last chosen planting site the soil was so impeccable he said
you weren't fucking around.
allowing myself a shy quiet moment of pride I then felt it was important to provide context. I pointed down at the soil and said
this was the day we found out T needed a biopsy.
We planted that clump extra tenderly.
The waxing crescent moon of this evening was fantabulous
