I don’t have much to say this week. Well, I do. I actually have too much to say. I just can’t say it all. My life has changed drastically in the last 9 or 10 (I can’t even keep count) months.
Right when I felt like I was coming out of the fog after Tom died, the pandemic hit.
And then the isolation.
Isolation.
It’s been difficult.
However, I try to find the good in each day. (Let’s be honest, some days I have to look REALLY hard!) I am learning to see beyond myself again, breaking through the barrier I put up in the beginning to keep myself and my kids safe. When I find little glimpses of magic, I go deep and really try to appreciate what it is, why it is there and take few minutes to internalize it. (A little hippy dippy, I know.) One little bit of magic is the amount of “volunteer” flowers and plants that have come up in my yard this Summer.
I’m sitting on our back porch on one of our new porch swings. There are two. One for Tom and one for me. They are covered with cushions and pillows and afghans. Everything you might need to spend weekend mornings reading the paper together, drinking coffee. Then weekend evenings together, drinking wine, snacking on cheese and crackers, before moving to the deck upstairs for star gazing (and more wine). The pots we planted with annuals last year are still here and overflowing with colorful flowers that I didn’t plant this year. Seeds have blown in and taken root and made themselves at home here. Little volunteers. I’m thankful nature did it’s thing as I wasn’t up for the task this Spring. During the long, dark Spring days in the first part of the pandemic all I could think of is why?? Why me?? I can only do one thing at a time. I can handle exactly one crisis at a time and I can manage it pretty well. But two? Two huge life crises at a time is out of my wheelhouse. I don’t have the bandwidth for it.
But now it is the end of Summer and I’ve found that I DO have the bandwidth for it. It IS in my wheelhouse. And we ARE surviving. (To be clear, I am not being cocky. I’ve been cocky before about small things and then I tripped and fell publicly, so to speak. Here I am just saying hindsight is 20/20.)
Anywaaaay…Volunteer plants remind me of two people specifically (well now three, I guess). One is my Grandma Doyle. She had a volunteer petunia come up in a pot on her porch one summer when I was little. It was a rare occasion when I was at her house without siblings or cousins and I followed her around her yard and checked on all of her flowers with her. She said she wasn’t very fond of petunias because they were so messy. The old dried up blooms fell off and left litter all over her porch. She kept them though because they were “volunteers” and they were like a gift (I’d never heard the word “volunteers” used in that context before). They were pretty when their blooms were new and bright, she said, but the dried blooms needed picked off everyday. It was more maintenance than she wanted, but she did it anyway.
“Volunteer” plants also remind me of a little girl for whom I used to babysit. She was disabled and I loved to care for her and brush her long hair. She was a true joy in my life. She became an Angel when she was 6 and I was 12, I think. It was the first time in my life when someone I loved died. After I had babies, every now and then I could smell her for just a fraction of a second. It was probably just sweet baby breath, but isn’t it interesting that she came to my mind all of those years later- so often? I would just send up a silent “Hello, Emily” and continue with what I was doing, hoping that if I didn’t over-think it, the fragrance would linger a little longer. She was unable to verbally communicate, but her smile lit up the room (the world really). Her mom said she smiled ear to ear the second she heard me holler “hello” from the front door. As you can see by some of my posts, I often babble on and on and I guess that’s why I loved her so much- she listened to me. My neighborhood friends and I would load her up in the stroller and walk her all over our small town. She loved it! When she got too big for the stroller, her dad made her a special cart to pull behind the bicycle (this was long before there were bike trailers). I actually can’t remember if I rode the bike that pulled her, or if I just went alongside on my own bike as her mom pulled her. Storing the cart was difficult, so her parents kept it tucked neatly outside under a birch tree. The first Spring without her, there was a volunteer petunia growing right where they used to keep her cart. Her mom said it’s proof that she’s okay and she’s just reminding us how much she loved taking all those bike rides.
The picture above is of our front flower bed. Tom loved the Buddha statue. And I think he loved it even more because I absolutely hated it. Not because of anything it does or doesn’t symbolize, but because it is a cheap plastic figure of a man in our FRONT yard! When I pulled into our driveway after the funeral one of my first thoughts was, “Well, I guess I can finally get rid of that plastic man now!” But, I had a houseful of guests and my children to care for, so I didn’t get around to it. Then I kind of forgot about it.
Eventually, I made it out there to pull some weeds and check on my perennials. What I found though were a bunch of volunteer plants. It was such a sweet surprise to see all of the extra vibrant flowers.
Tom had just made this flower bed last year and grew the marigolds from seed. Alex helped get the ground ready and brought up soil and rocks from out back. (He and Tom would make any excuse to use the tractor!) Tom and Maggie had grown the seedlings in yogurt jars and one of the old jars was still there upended. It about broke my heart.
There is also a volunteer tomato plant growing there. We perfected the caprese salad last year with our own tomatoes and our own basil and made them all summer, as long as the earth provided the ingredients. Tom liked to make my salad for me. He picked fresh spinach and radicchio from our garden and made a lovely salad with balsamic and olive oil from his favorite local shop (Grove Stone). He added fresh pepper and freshly ground salt, and I am telling you, it was delish! I don’t know why there is a tomato plant growing there this year. It’s not really suitable for the front yard. But neither is the Buddha. It’s like the land of misfit toys.
I am inspired by this silly little Buddha now and amazed at the amount of volunteer flowers growing around it. There are at least three petunia plants (in various shades of pink) growing like crazy there! It makes me nostalgic.
As I was messing around with the plants, I noticed a tiny feather on one of the red leaves of the coleus plant. A little sign that Tom is okay? I think he’s laughing, reminding me by dropping a feather on these “volunteers” of how often I used to say, “You know I hate that Buddha statue, right?” He was kind of a smart ass like that.
I can’t wait til the tomatoes are ready so I can make a salad. It will be without the lettuces this year, because I can’t do it all, (but I can almost do it all). I am in a healthy mindset allowing me to enjoy life and the new plans I’m making and to witness the sweet little surprises along the way.
And as I look at my entire yard, the flowering pots on my back porch with yellow petunias and orange rose moss and especially the land of misfit toys in my front yard with pink petunias, red coleus, and golden marigolds, I’m reminded of who I’ve lost and their little ways of coming to my memory. I pick the expired blooms off of all the petunias before they dry up and fall off. I think of my Grandma as I collect them in my hands and then I throw them like confetti into the lawn. When I notice the bright new pink bloom of a young volunteer petunia plant, I think of my little friend, Emily. And when I see the large waves of petunias starting to cover the Buddha beside the tomato plant I think of Tom. I say to myself, “I hope the neighbors and my visitors don’t think I’ve designed this flower bed myself, because it doesn’t make any sense!”
Then I go deep. I remember it wasn’t designed by anyone at all. It was designed by God and I don’t need to understand it. Throwing a bunch of volunteers into my life. Bringing me so much joy and color. Bringing me a little mess to tend to. It’s more maintenance than I want, but I’ll do it anyway. Giving me the healthy perspective to see the “litter” as confetti . Reminding me it’s impossible to have the color without the mess. Do I like that He gave me all of that and then took it away. Absolutely not, but I’ll talk to Him about that when I see Him. I have a whole long list of complaints actually. Also, a whole list of thank yous.
I enjoy color more than I ever did now, in any way it presents itself through nature. I’ve always seen nature with my eyes.
But now I also feel it in my heart. ❤️🌸
