This is day two although it appears that I have missed a day.  I spent yesterday, after the orthopedist to check Julia’s legs and a nursery stop to buy two new plants, in the garden.  Specifically, I dismantled the very front corner garden bed which is a rounded triangle and filled it again.  I have for a very long time disliked the planting in this bed and slowly this summer I have been subtracting plants and pulling roots.  Today, I cleared the bed leaving only a peony, a Russian sage, and a small grass.  Oh, some sedum too. Corm and corms of iris were dug and a bushel of lily of the valley.  It took most of the day and by the time Julia came home from school, I was just a bit more than half done.  She wanted to play with bugs; I didn’t want to stop my make over and so we stayed out for another two hours.

The finished product is not very impressive right now.  Lots of sticks with roots taken from that bed and others and divided.  Two phlox which will look the worse for wear come tomorrow and a new grass that is tall and airy which will complement the Russian sage and the arrow straight cone flowers.  

It is amazing how long it has taken to get back to a passionate day in the garden.  This is not the first but I still cannot take the deep satisfaction for granted.  I laugh at myself as I realize that my very old feeling that it is most appropriate to neglect the cleaning of the inside of the house as long as the weather is good for gardening.  Papers pile up almost as quickly as weeds grow.  Pausing mid-tasking, I wondered the why of the satisfaction I find in this hard, sweaty work.  There is no reason that I need a garden -- three years of neglect has shown me that.  And there is no reason.  Perhaps the answer is the same as, why love?

Julia is riding her bike around the block when I walk the dog in the evening.  She is more steady and using her hand break.  She is also taking the corner turns just a bit too tight.  She fell once when her turn was way too sharp for her to hold onto balance.  Yesterday, she told me that it was fun to ride as I walked.  First time she has said that.

Her first week of school has gone pretty well.  Julia has told me about most of the reported rough spots, and there are reports of her engaging students that she has not talked to before.  I think that she will work on writing this year.  I am not sure why but it seems like her focus.  At present, she writes enthusiastically but without linear understanding.  We have a few different outline supports and she uses them with great effort.  When I think back to my own school days, I remember learning to write when I was in fourth grade.  Suddenly, it was an open world putting ideas down on paper.  I remember feeling like I never got the chance to write what I wanted to.  Always boring essays and correct grammar, never the stories that were in my head.  I knew nothing of journals or notebooks that were used only at home then.  Julia knows about both, she is always hungering for new paper for writing.  And they want her to type -- an interesting idea.  Her first homework assignment, writing a reflection paragraph on some reading is going to take hours!  <smile>