Break it Down

Victory Garden Mentality
Little by little, I am going green. For years I have been composting earthy material from my kitchen. I have a Victory Garden mentality. My thumbs have a pale green hue to them. I just can't get my whole body on board. A crooked spine and arthritic joints, do not lend themselves well to physical work, but I get by. My yard gets worked on with the speed of someone who quilts by hand. I'm talking King sized, intricate quilts, one would find hanging in an Amish barn. It is a painfully slow work in progress. Every spring I work a small area into a hodgepodge, floral mess. There is no cultivation from seed indoors, followed by careful transplantation after intense study of the Farmers Almanac. I can handle planting flowers directly in the ground as long as they are going to come back the next year, without any further help from me.

My yard is as colorful as my yarn collection and just as varied. There are Cone flowers, Black Eyed Susan, Hydrangea, Dogwood, Rose of Sharon, Dusty Miller, Butterfly Bush, Daisies, Lupin and small wild pink roses. My sister Susan, possesses the greenest thumbs I have ever seen. She has informed me that the pink roses, are in fact a weed. Old "Black Eye" herself has cautioned me to yank them, lest they take over my yard. I can't do it. They're tiny and pink and they smell like heaven when the wind blows just right. Their sweet aroma wafts up and into my open bedroom windows in the summertime. They remind me that the best things in life really are free. Just like all that vegetable matter that I toss into my compost bin all year long. Yesterday, I tended to the bin. I churned it over and mixed it up. I cleared the debris from around the base of the container and I readied it for distribution. It amazes me how mother nature works, when we let it work, the way it is supposed to. My kitchen waste breaks down and morphs into the richest, blackest soil for free.

It got me thinking about how other things break down in life. Sometimes it's relationships. Bit by bit they erode until there isn't much left but mists of wistful reveries or anger. Disease may whittle away body parts and leave pain and isolation in it's aftermath. Whole chunks of memory can evaporate leaving gaping holes in our reminiscing and distance us further from life as we knew it. Life really is like a big compost pile. At times, we lose things that are beyond our control. Some things we discard with regret. In any event, like a butterfly, something new emerges from those dark places. Life has a way of filling up those gaps and holes again.

I think when we suffer a loss of any kind, we have to be brave and look at what has fallen away from us. We all have our own compost pile of sorts to deal with. Our stuff that has to be broken down, turned over and tended to, until it yields something else, something useful, something beautiful even. It's hard to imagine that beauty can come from pain and loss. Wildly beautiful things have been borne of grief and emptiness. Just like those tiny roses, those weeds. Pink blossoms that have sprung up, unbidden but no less perfect than their flowerbed mates. Still, they must be trimmed and kept under a watchful eye. Wild beauty has a tendency to crowd out the cultivated flora. Their small, sharp thorns can rip the flesh off of my hands, if I don't protect them but they're worth it. I look forward to a summer breeze. I picture all those colorful heads swaying and nodding in approval. Some things are meant to be broken down and worked into the ground, to foster a new beginning.

While protection from the sharp edges of life is essential, it is not something to be worn indefinitely. Hip waders are meant to be a temporary accessory. You don't want those suckers to fill up when you are waste deep in it! It's not healthy to stay stuck in a bad patch for too long. Moving out of it may require getting your feet wet. What's a little mess, oozing up between your bare toes? It's just mother earth, mulching what falls by the wayside. Step in it! Cultivate something new. Tend to your garden. Garbage in, garbage out, and voila, a beautiful landscape emerges. My flower of choice, just happens to be a weed in the eyes of "black eyed Susan"! My garden and her garden are immensely different but they are no less blooming miracles!