Outside

It is a gorgeous day here in Maine today. Bright, sunny, warm (50s). I turned my heat back off and opened the front windows while I was piddling around with the things that *had* to get done today (made cupcakes for Kira's class, although I still need to frost them; burned a CD of pictures for Mark to transfer to his laptop for his photo collage; attempted to work on laundry but just couldn't get into the right frame, although I did wash and dry a couple loads--haven't folded, though).

Outside just kept tempting me. Now this is very weird, because I don't usually spend a lot of time outside. I don't like being where people can look at me, and my house gets a fair amount of traffic, which equals people. But for some reason I was just dying to get into the outside air. So finally after I did the "have to's," I grabbed a book, blanket, pillow, and went out. I scrounged through the garage until I found a lawn chair (one of those old tri-fold aluminum-frame things with the thin vinyl tube-y whatchamacallit-webbing....do they even MAKE those anymore?) and dragged it out by my new fence, facing the house, next to the tree garden. That chair was so old and crappy (it had not been used in probably eight or more years), it kept folding up on me as soon as I tried to get it set up. So I'd have to climb out, click the section all the way in to the middle and then back out flat, and try again. After about the fifteenth try with it, I folded it back up, stuck it in the "take it to the dump ASAP" pile and grabbed another one. Not much better, but I was able to finally get in a somewhat comfortable position with my pillow and blanket and book, and enjoy the breeze and the sun. It was really quite wonderful.

After awhile I got a little restless, and just kept looking at the horribly overgrown rock garden. I'm not sure exactly what my initial thought was, but before I knew it I had my pruners and I was wading through it, hacking back weeds and dead stalks to the ground.

Oh my holy cow, gardening. I had missed it SO much. I got completely out of the groove when I hurt my ankle in May, and it's just now gotten to the point where more often than not, I am not in any pain or discomfort or hyperawareness of possible re-injury. In the meantime, I haven't done ANY real gardening in the last five months, and I hadn't really realized just how therapeutic it is for me. I just LOVE it. I'm not very good, or very consistent, but man, it is just so awesome a feeling to clear things out, make a gorgeous little patch of dirt, and grow things. I love physically working hard on something that is visually rewarding. It's just such an awesome, awesome feeling. I have GOT to remember how great this is.

I got the rock garden cleared of the big weeds (now I have a big pile of them, need to get rid of that). I can actually see the magnolia tree that's in there! It's been lost in the overgrowth. I'm hoping that maybe on Friday the weather will still be good and I can do some more clearing of the other gardens, and get them all ready for winter. Yay!

Ah, bus. Gotta run. mk