If I had to give a one word title to this post, I'd fall back on this one -- time. With a few pat phrases thrown in: how time flies... how we waste time... that project takes too much time... not enough time to read and play... time to go now... time is everything.
Several events conspired to make me very much aware of time. First - the weather sucks. It's April at its worst. Yuk.
(what you see is snow on the trees and timber)
Time for a reset! Although Ed warned me that we are in a La Niña year, where the cool air has gripped the northern hemisphere and will likely linger into the summer. Cool and wet? Hmmm. I suppose we're due for that. We've had such pretty summers the last few years!
Breakfast, alone this time. I have a Zoom call soon and Ed is fast asleep upstairs and I am feeling compassion and sympathy.
My Zoom call is with a Polish friend -- he'd sent me a photo of our group taken fifty years ago. Before we were all married and settled, and certainly before we were anywhere near thinking about retirement. These young men were my best friends in those days, and they had come to New York to visit me. So we talked about it. How young and brazen we were. Puffed out chests, cocky, self assured. Big hair. Ready for anything. Taking chances with our lives. Traveling, always traveling.
Then came the fifty years of real life. Some really good years, some amount of tragedy, all unpredictable, unexpected. We're not shriveled and resigned by any means, but man oh man, have we ever changed over the years!
Interrupted thoughts. Time to pick up Snowdrop. Even though I have little time with her today, as she has a phone date with other grandparents later in the afternoon. She and I have just enough time to finish that wonderful book that swallowed us whole yesterday ("Measuring Up").
And then I quickly take her home and return to the farmhouse to my old yellow pot in which I have cooked a million stews, soups, chilis, and who knows what else over the nearly fifty years that I have cooked with it. Ed and I are still talking about replacing our gas stove this summer, but I have to say, I would not have been so willing to do it if the new stove-top could not have handled my Big Yellow Pot. (Fortunately it's a fit!)
In the evening, I come back to thinking about my garden. It's time to reevaluate my strategy here: last year I expanded, it grew, some of it was taken over by weeds, other parts I gave up on, figuring that the maple roots will never allow for a good flower growing experience. So, lots of good outcomes, but also some poor results. The thing is, I'm not sure I want to fix the poor results. The bed by the sheep shed will never be free of the invasive growth of pernicious weeds. The bed by the road will never thrive in the way that I imagined it would when I first planted it. So what's the long term plan now? I mean, I'm planting a lavender bed out back, but how about the remaining beds -- what's the vision?
I'm thinking about it. That's something, isn't it? Time to reimagine where I'm heading. It'll take time, but I am definitely re-conceptualizing how best to approach the challenge of maintaining a dozen huge flower fields.
And of course, because I'm still with a half a foot in Europe, I drift off to sleep before it's time for me to do so. Bed time is fluid when you travel and when you return! Good night then. May we wake up to a warmer day! Enough of this dusting of snow already. It's time to move on.
