Yesterday afternoon and early this morning

Afternoon

We have gotten a surprising amount of house tasks finished.  We woke up at 8 and I mopped the house -- I had vacuumed yesterday and we both put stuff away on Friday.  We went outside while it was still cool and I gardened and Julia played with her bugs.  The phlox is finally booming.  I cannot tell the difference between phlox leaven and a tall weed that is doing rather well in my garden.  With the phlox blooming -- or at least beginning to -- I now know which tall weedy plant to pull.  And that’s what I did this morning.  The pulling clears a little more of the part of the apron bed that looks like a jumble for most of the spring and summer.  I am slowly emptying it and this fall I will figure out what I want it to look like.

There are some spectacular parts of the front and back gardens -- like the hollyhocks in the front which are really magnificent but all in all, the gardens still look very ragged and messy, but I am not trying for manicured perfection this year.  This is coming home to the garden and much, much transition.  It will be more than a year before I brag about this garden.  And that’s ok.  Perhaps by then I will find some joy as well.

Next morning.

I re-read the last sentence that I wrote.  “Find[ing] some joy.”  I wonder of that.  For the moment, in this early morning before the business of the day begins, I feel a growing patience which seems to be due to my practice, at least in part.  Some due to this season of letting the school year’s work that I lean into hard nine months of the year really lie fallow.  I don’t think I really understood fallow time before taking some more than a year ago.  Of course, that fallow time was hardly what it was called -- I kept so busy with grieving and getting so many physical circumstances in order.  This summer IS fallow time.  There is very little tilling of our intellectual soil.  And I feel how much we need this time.  

Ok, I’ve lost my thread.

So I see patience and probably resilience growing above ground this summer, the roots working for at least nine months or so.  And now, I am also looking for joy.  Optimistic.  Indeed.  But not a bad goal.  

Julia should begin her third period this week.  Right now, I am struggling with whether to try to teach her to use tampons so that she can swim this week.  I have no idea of how to do that.  No one taught me.  Did I help Cheshire at all with this?  Or just wait for her to pick it up “on the street?”  Is there a youtube video?  I remember sitting out swimming when I was a kid and then having to explain why I was sitting out to my brother without any help from my mother.  Julia would not need to explain to anyone but I hate her missing the pool, especially lessons this week.

Time for an oil change for the car before the real fun of the day begins.