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Category: Garden

Bursting Forth

Yesterday afternoon I kept dozing off. It was safe, I was happily ensconced at the salon for a manicure and pedicure, and was probably the most relaxed I've been in over a week. I actually came home and took a nap before busying myself again. Can't say that I was energetic though, I had barely enough energy to spiralize some zucchini into zoodles. Which was good because it meant I at least had something to eat.

Zoodles with olive oil and garlic, seared scallops. Perhaps the garlic is darker than I intended, and the scallops lighter, but delicious none the less.

You see, I've not been sleeping very well at all. I stay up too late (because I can't sleep) and wake up too early, and although the circles under my eyes grow deeper and darker, sleep eludes me. I've been simultaneously excited and terrified, extremely focused and yet distracted, feeling like I am standing on the edge, but on the edge of what? The precipice? Shangri-La? Likely neither of those. I just have to open the door and walk through.

I am closing on a new house this morning, hence all the stress and excitement. Why the particular sense of terror mingled with all that excitement? I only suppose that it is that same sense of striking out on my own, of letting go, perhaps mingled with a tinge of fear. I alternate between being long past ready to move, although I don't yet have my current house on the market and I don't have a moving date, and a deeply unsettling need to hunker down and stay even though I know in my bones that it is not the right thing to do. Sometimes the familiar is all too appealing.

Besides, in a truly rational sense, it is not like I am really doing anything I haven't done before. Its not my first house. George wasn't even really all that involved in the last house purchase, even though he was here for emotional support, at least in his physical presence and its link to the shared history and relationship. Intellectually, and often emotionally, however he was not always there, and how I struggled with that loss at the time, with the responsibility I did not want to claim. I had managed everything for a long time. Despite all that, despite decades of experience in life and houses, it is like everything is new, and what lies beyond the door frame is shadowed in fog.

The first Iris Histroides popped its head up this week. One brave, lonely blossom surrounded by bare ground. She made me smile. She still make me smile. She looks so delicate and fragile, yet I know she will survive whatever Mother Nature throws her way, even frosts and snow. I should take heart in that. Spring comes regardless. All you have to do is walk through the door.

February 16, 2017
Putterings

Somehow I missed posting on Tuesday. But it was a day filled with small joys.

The picture hangers came early and we moved pictures around. This large photo ended up above the mantel. I spent the remainder of the morning playing around, moving lamps and various vases and vessels, figuring out what would go where.

In the afternoon I worked in the yard. We are still in the early stages of spring, or is it the wishful stages of spring? But the hellebores are looking even more lush and beautiful than they were a few weeks ago.

And I have the beginnings of small buds on these tiny Hilda Niblett azaleas. My forsythia is budding heavily but is not quite in bloom yet. There are forsythia blossoms all over Knoxville, but the shady side of my hilltop is a week or two behind those parts of town closer to the river, increasing the anticipation and prolonging the pleasure.

February 8, 2017
Breath and Blossoms

The Hellebores are out and blooming. Earlier in the week I was able to sit outside and admire them, able to pretend that spring was truly just around the corner. By Friday there was a turnabout, reminding one more of Mother Goose: "The North Wind doth blow, and we shall have snow". It did flurry most of Friday morning, with no lasting effect. It is possible I might have wished otherwise, that I may have found a blanket of white charming, in which case I might have run out to take a prettier picture. My fellow Knoxvillians may be happier with the security of browns and the safety of dry roads.

Of course the hellebores are not the only signs that spring will in fact spring-forth. There are buds on the forsythia and a medley of green shoots are forcing their heads up through the dirt, with promise of various spring bulbs to follow. They add a lovely counterpoint to the fading pink blossoms cast off from the camellias, which are nearing the end of their blooming season after nearly two months of abundant frivolity.

And I too am feeling brighter, and nearly ready to leap forward. Upon the recommendation of a friend I booked an appointment at a Salt Spa, and have had two treatments. After the first, I was able to breathe more deeply than I had had been possible since sometime in mid December, and although I still have a remnant of my cough it is in retreat. Two treatments and my sinuses remain clearer, my breathing easier, and not surprisingly my thoughts perhaps more coherent. It may be coincidence, but I am inclined to say the treatments help. Besides, as I rationalized before beginning, how could scheduled meditative time be a bad thing, even if there were no other benefit. Given that I had been unable to breathe easily enough to meditate before attending the spa, I am happy for the win.

January 28, 2017
A Few Bright Spots in the December Garden

We had over 5 inches of rain at my house the last two days of November. It has rained since, and heavily yesterday, but I don't have rainfall information, as I rely on my neighbor down the street for the specifics, but I do know that the direct Knoxville area received between 3 and 6 inches of rain the last two days of November, which is a good start considering the extreme drought we have been experiencing. I know it is nothing like the 5-year drought that ended recently where my mom lives in Texas, or California droughts, but Tennessee is not an area familiar with drought and it has been a rather shocking experience.

The good news, from my immediate perspective is that the drain I put in the back of the yard in the late summer worked well during the downpours, both last week and yesterday, and the back half of my lawn and flower beds are no longer a swamp. This is a good thing. The hill behind my house also held. It could use some more attractive vegetation but I am happy as long as it is not washing down into my yard. There is an area that is still washing out, but as it is common area, the HOA is collecting proposals on how to address that particular problem. For the first time since moving here, I do not have a sea of mud following a major rain, and I am able to enjoy the patio and walkway. Well, I will be able to enjoy it once it gets a little warmer and I remove some wet leaves.

The garden has not completely gone dormant either. There are a few small blooms here and there, an occasional rose in the side yard, although the knockout roses in the front may be done for the season, and the camellias are blooming steadily now. I also, surprisingly, got a second batch of habaneros and another batch of jam was promptly dispatched. There are more habanero peppers on the plant, and despite a few nights in the 20s the plant is still going strong. I however, may be done with summer fruits and ready to put out holiday decorations.

December 8, 2016
Monday Miscellany

The first camellia blossom opened on Thanksgiving day.

I spent a good bit of the first part of the day in the kitchen, certainly a very happy place for me. Then there was family and food, fabulous movie time as we all settled in to watch Hayo Miyazaki's Spirited Away in the afternoon. It was a perfectly lovely day, filled with companionship and I enjoyed cooking and hosting just as much as I enjoyed the time together.

I must have been tired however, as I believe I took 3 naps on Friday. It is probably not surprising, since I was up working both early and late both prepping for thanksgiving dinner and with various household projects bookending the work of the painters every day. The living room was finished Wednesday afternoon, just in time for me to put the glassware back in the breakfront and resume Thanksgiving preparations, and the truth was that I would have been perfectly happy to just sit still and look at the walls. The painters will finish up this week; only the laundry room, 3 small closets, and the garage remain. It was perfect timing though for a long weekend, and Friday was spent simply puttering. I'm sure there will be further adjustments, mostly minor, in time, but for now I am content to sit and wait for inspiration to strike.

I finished a pillow cover I had been working on rather haphazardly, knitted from two skeins of Colinette's Prism yarn that I uncovered when I was recently sorting and cataloging yarn.. The colorway is called Gaugin. This was the first project I had knit for myself in quite a while, and I am happy with how it turned out.

Saturday afternoon I started knitting myself a sweater. It has been a long time; the last sweater I started, two years ago, is still sitting in my knitting box waiting to be assembled, and it has probably been over three years since I've actually knit and finished a sweater for myself. I've not been good at updating my ravelry projects so I am not certain about dates. But I am amazed at how fun and soothing I am finding the knitting to be, and how free of obligation. That doesn't mean I won't finish this sweater. I will, and the act of knitting is also kindling my desire to finish off those languishing UFOs. I suppose there needs to be some fun knitting to balance off the more detailed, and work-like part, which is finishing, but even the finishing seems appealing again.

Slowly things are coming back together and I am rediscovering the way time stops when I have yarn or embroidery thread or fabric in my hands.

November 28, 2016
Five Things Friday

The painting continues.  I continue to be a bit discombulated by the upending of my routines and the constant shifting and reshifting of things about the house.

1. But I love the newly painted rooms, both the colors, which aren't actually radically different from what was here before, but also the shifting patterns of light on the walls.

2. Even the gray that I had before, (elephant gray) looks more beautiful in a better quality of paint, with a soft sheen. I think you can get a small sense of that comparing the gray around the doorframe in the top picture, which has not yet been painted, although that wall will be the same shade of gray, with the wall around the vanity (left) shown above. I may have to take another version of the first picture above, once that wall is finished, just for the sake of comparison.

3. The temperatures are to drop to very close to the frost line tonight, or, actually, in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. I harvested a good sized bowl of habaneros today in preparation, and will be making salsa or jam. It has been a good summer for peppers, and the plant is still laden with green unripe fruit, which may well be lost, But I do not want to bring the pepper plant indoors at this point, and I probably have more habanero peppers than I would otherwise have ever used.

4. I suppose this may be the end of the rose blossoms as well, but perhaps not. They are pretty much the only things left blooming in my yard. The sprinkler system has been shut down for the season, And aside from watering some new fall plantings I am not inclined to water. The ground is so dry that it is like concrete.   I am planning on moving some laurels that are in a spot that is far too sunny for them. I have new shrubs to put in their place, but the dislocated shrubs may just be temporarily relocated into the flower beds until it after the rains, whenever they come.

5. I just finished reading Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and it was a both deeply beautiful and deeply unsettling book. Although the structure of the novel itself is in fact fairly conventional and linear, the language is anything but expected or conventional. There are few coherent sentences, and yet the story itself has a coherent flow if you allow the words their own space and their own musicality. I suppose one might think it the author was attempting to write in a stream of consciousness mode, but that is not exactly it. More likely the language seems to be attempting to explore that indistinct bridging between the inner primitive instinctual reaction and conscious thought. The language of the novel seems to float in shifting sands between the rawness of instinct and the music of poetry. In fact I would say this novel is far easier to read if you approach it as it was an epic poem. Then the language can capture something elusive, and beautiful, in the story, even though the story itself is tragic. Another point, even though one feels one knows the main character here, this too is an just an impression. We read, and think we know the narrator's thoughts, but just as we ourselves are more than just our instinctual selves, so too this narrator, but we never really see her fully, just as we are never told anything about the physical being of any of the characters.   It is a haunting novel of pain and suffering and love, but also of knowing and not-knowing, and as such, I think it will remain with me for a long time.

November 11, 2016
Three Things Thursday

1. It is a cool, gray, drizzly day here in Knoxville, although there was a brief bit of sunshine. It would be a perfect day for working in the flower beds except that the drainage work is finally being done in the back of my yard after a long series of frustrating delays. Once again there are heavy machines and men in boots mucking about and digging things up. Admittedly I've let that section of the flower bed go to weed. It was a hot summer after all, and I knew the area would have to be dug up, so it hardly seemed worth the sweat and effort, knowing that any fruits of my labors would be destroyed. I've been waiting for this job since June and I am happy that the digging and hardscapes are finally complete (fingers crossed).

2. Last night's concert at the Knoxville Museum of Art was stunning in its beauty. Our fabulous young concertmaster, Gabriel Lefkowitz performed Brahms' First Violin Sonata in G Major, bringing the soothing lyricism of the piece to life, his violin singing with a gentle effusiveness, as if all the cares of the world could be washed away in the music. The second half of the program, Schubert's "Trout" Quintet, was also beautifully performed and it was an experience altogether different from the one at the square room a week ago, even though two of the musicians were the same. This time the music had its own life, the individual musicians indistinguishable, as if there were a profound conversation going on between them, the music melding to become something with its own life and presence, where as the previous week's concert I had felt like I was hearing three distinct musicians playing the same piece. It was as if a couple of people were talking about the same thing and drawing the same conclusions, but although they were "hearing" each other, they weren't really listening, the experience was not transformative. Last night's performance was something else all together, five musicians coming together to create something greater than themselves. If you are in Knoxville and you have a chance to go to tonight's performance, go.

3. I am reading Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. Actually I've gotten a kind of slow start, not because I don't love the novel, I do but because I started it on my kindle and now I've moved to a paperback copy and have found myself needing to step back, and retrace my steps. I don't believe I had fully realized how different my experience of reading is, and how different my perceptions and reactions, between reading on the kindle, versus reading an actual book. This has made me step back and pause somewhat. I knew that I liked certain kinds of books better on one or the other, and that if I loved a book on the kindle, I might buy a physical copy as well, and end up rereading it as it always seemed different on paper. But only now am I beginning to understand the repercussions, and appreciate how the difference affects my thoughts and relationship to the material being read.

September 29, 2016
Three Things Thursday

1. I was wandering around in the garden this morning, looking at all the weeds I need to pull and admiring the ways the flowers continue to bloom and thrive despite benign neglect. I've not been the best gardener of late, being somewhat preoccupied with other things, although I have to admit that summer heat has never been my friend.

Mostly I was feeling a little tired and faded, willing to sit back and just look at the weeds, pulling a few here and there, reminding myself that I'm about ready to return to the garden, but not today. Sometimes it is best to just sit back and let things be. I was drawn to the glorious color of these roses from across the yard, but when I got close I could see how they were a bit tired and faded along the edges.

The roses look exactly how I feel, a little floppy and droopy, but still hanging in there, and generally pretty happy.

2. Our church installed our new rector on Tuesday night. The ceremony was beautiful, and I got a chance to see some dear people I hadn't seen in a long time. Following the service was a celebratory dinner, held outside. It was a glorious evening, perfect for a joyous event. We had set up for 300, but there were a few empty seats so it is possible we only had 280 or 290. Either that or not everyone was seated at the same time, which is also quite likely.

I chaired the dinner committee, but if ever a project took a village, it was this one and I am so thankful for all the people who donated their time, money, or other miscellaneous items to make this truly a community celebration. I am also honored to have been a part of such a fabulous team of creative, dedicated, hard-working people. The team had been out in the heat Monday afternoon, with the advanced prep work required for setting up tiki torches and assembling items for the tables, and then again for most of the day on Tuesday getting everything set and ready.

3. This morning I was up early, having finally caught up on sleep, and fluids, and perhaps some quiet, meditative, time as well. I was up in the sewing room before dawn, disassembling this dress I bought in Florida in June, and re-sewing the side seams, whacking off about and inch and a half at the bust, and three inches at the hips. Granted it was about an inch too big in the hips when I bought it, but it still feels good to be able to wear the dress, and to knock one simple project of the to-do list. As you can see from the photo, I still have stuff piled up in the guest room, stuff that needs to go back to the master bedroom now that the floors are finished. The big boxes actually contain new light fixtures waiting for the electricians to return, or are they waiting for me call the electricians now that my schedule is once-again free? Heaven forbid I should have nothing to do…

September 1, 2016
Five Things Friday

1. The dressers I dismantled and reassembled so that they were all the same height were moved into the master bedroom closet.

Now all my clothes are in one place, in a room where there is light and they can actually be seen. It is both wonderful and overwhelming. Even though my closet is by no means full, my first reaction on seeing everything together is "I have too many clothes". But I have already edited my closet down considerably, eliminating things that fit a previous life, that didn't fit, or were the wrong colors. The problem is that I have a wall of fabric I want to make into clothes while at the simultaneously feeling that there are things I need (there are indeed) and I have too much. The challenge is finding the perfect meeting of these all too human impulses, realizing as I do so that contradiction is an essential part of human nature. Our passage through life is a process of growth and also of editing or refinement. I think somewhere along the line my journey the balance between making and editing will take on a more curatorial process. Or I could just be saying that to make myself feel better.

2. Last November I brought a silver chest home from Texas. It was made by my grandfather and contained assorted sets and remnants of my grandmother's silver. The silver simply needed polishing, but the chest needed refinishing and relining with silver cloth. It went off to be refinished and restored, along with a small chest of drawers I had salvaged many years previously when someone left it out on one of the designated curbside pickup days. Both chests came back home in mid July.

My grandmother's silver has been returned to the upper chest, where it is used every day. The lower chest, which I suspect was originally meant to store papers, now holds placemats, napkins and assorted small pieces. The drawer bottoms are very thin, hand planed at about 1/8 or 3/16 inch thickness and were bowed and split to the point that I couldn't use most of the drawers. They have been flattened and restored and are now usable. This little chest is one of my most treasured objects, and using both of these pieces, my hands opening drawers made by previous hands, knowing that they were saved from the ignomy of a landfill somewhere to find new life and use, brings its own kind of joy.

3. A couple of times this summer, I've cracked an egg in the morning to find double yolks:

I always get a little thrill somehow, but it is a thrill tinged with sadness and knowledge of the fragility of life. You know of course that twin chicks do not survive. If embryos even develop, they rarely survive to hatching, and then cannot get themselves out of the shell, not having either enough room or enough strength to survive. A chick that cannot get itself out of its own shell does not have the strength to live, despite all the best, and most-well-intentioned efforts of kind-hearted humans. Food for thought.

4. A process that started with reassembling dressers (above) has taken on a life of its own and I find myself in the middle of an extended nesting phase. Even in terms of decorating or home improvement, it seems I am all in or all out. Wallpaper was put up in my office, turning it into a little jewel box that I hardly want to leave, which may be a good thing as I am involved in several outside projects as well, with a few more on the horizon.

There are two paint swatches on the gray wall in the hall. One is actually the same shade of gray that is currently on the wall, but it appears slightly darker. it could simply be the difference of using a higher quality paint and a different base than the one used by the builder, although the actual color formula is supposed to be the same. I am not knowledgeable enough about paint to say. The lower swatch is slightly lighter with a slightly more obvious lavender cast. A decision has not yet been made, but I have learned that I am very comfortable with gray.

5. It has been a long time since I've posted any kind of garden photos. Truthfully it was hot and dry in July and the unrelenting heat was not encouraging. But the small creeping sedum I planted in the bare area of the front bed, at the base of the magnolia has done very well, and is blooming. Sometimes great beauty comes in very small packages.

August 19, 2016
It seems I have few words this week. I almost said I have few thoughts, but that would be misleading. It is more that my thoughts have not yet found their form as words and I am perhaps too weary to tease out the finer points of connection.

Instead I will regale you with photos of birthday tulips

and a few garden photos,

some taken in bright light, a degree of light with which I am not yet comfortable photographically,

and others in a softer and more subtle light.

Come to think of it, my words are lost somewhere in the middle ground, trying to find their own nuanced path through the wilds of light and shadow.

July 9, 2016