Friday

One more day of steady work outside. The parking lot bed is a mess. Weeds, an excessive spread of phloxes, the encroaching hydrangea, and did I mention weeds? A cleanup is in order. Sigh... a cleanup is always in order. Everywhere. House, yard, yard, house. You have to turn a blind eye to most of it or else all your time will be sucked up by cleaning, straightening, clipping, scrubbing, brushing, dusting, digging...

The morning is cool, but once again, with a promise of a pretty day. Kind of incredible, considering the weather chaos in the south.

I pick up bakery treats downtown. Stocking up, now that we have an easy reheat system going!

 

 

 

Breakfast. Cinnamon rolls, fruits, flowers from the market. Ed needs a beard trim: add that to my list of cleanups!

Now to work. Dig, pull, move Lost Lilies. Again. And again. 

I ask Ed for help in cleaning out a pathway. And in loading a cart full of chips. And still I use up the whole morning, all those hours until it's time for me to get the kids. Dig, pull, move Lost Lilies. Chip. 

Ed says -- you must like doing this. He knows he's going to get a "yes and no" answer out of me. I like the results, I like some of the work, and I think all of it is good for me.  I love the satisfaction of getting a job done. I don't like doing a half-assed job and knowing that I left too much behind. 

He continues -- picking out flowers and hotel rooms for your trips, yep, your favorite tasks.

Alright, mr. smartie pants. Not exactly my favorite tasks... But he is right: I can lose myself in this work and completely let go of the feeling of time passing. The clock becomes irrelevant. The focus is on imagining how a flower will look come spring, or how I will feel waking up in that room, far away from home, far away from a to-do list. Far away. It's all very satisfying!

 

The kids are in good spirits.

 

 

Call it end of the week joy!

And toward the end of the afternoon, after I drop them off, I return to the flower fields, finishing off a few of them before the light fades.

I notice that I work in circles. I began the cleaning operations in the fields closest to the farmhouse door and slowly I expanded my reach. This Fall, I've done everything but the fields by the sheep shed and the field by the road. Somehow you always want order closest to your home and you're more comfortable with chaos the farther you step away from your little nest. There are pockets of total chaos in the farmette lands -- behind the writers shed, in the far corners of the property. We don't really mind that. Order can be stifling and of course the animals, the insects -- they thrive in the thickets, not the neatly weeded spaces. 

Still, I'm glad I worked hard to tidy the flowers fields this year. It will be much easier to attend to them in spring. That's the hope!

with love...