New Moon Spring Self-Care

Spent an amazing Saturday evening *by myself*.  This week has been a really intense ending to a fairly intense semester.   As part of my self-care, I finally got out in my garden and planted all the seedlings I bought weeks ago (some of which look the worse for wear after waiting outside for me to find time for them).   I sifted through the springy, alive compost I spent all winter making, and just got back in touch with the ground that I hadn't touched for almost nine months.  I pulled weeds, cleared ground, and dug nutrient-rich compost into some of the harder winter dirt and planted about half my garden with kale, cabbage and tomatoes.   Last year, I tried, as usual, to have it all - but my cabbages, shoved into a shady corner, grew slowly and  were ravaged by bugs and bunnies.  This year, I thought about what I *really* wanted, and what I had energy for.   Instead of tucking in carrots or onions where they really wouldn't have space to grow, or crowding in larger plants in an effort to "have it all," I chose a few plants I really wanted to prosper - cabbage, kale, spinach, tomatoes - and spread them out all over the garden.  I gave them a crap-ton of compost and plenty of room to be strong and well.   I knew this meant I would have to give up some things - eggplants, for one, and maybe green peppers - but I know that I won't have time to tend high-maintenance seedlings or slow-growing, disease-prone tropical plants like them.   So I did the hardest thing for me - I said "no" to possibility and variety.   Instead, I channeled strength and power into the "few good things."  Cabbage, kale and spinach have become staples- this summer, I'm hoping to provide weekly food instead of dazzling breadth.   We'll see if I can hold back, though.   I do love the *4* eggplants or peppers I usually get.


This is, as usual, a metaphor for my life.  I am fueled by the possibilities - or my dreams of how life *could* be.    This is both beautiful and dangerous.  
As a little girl, I remember staring in the mirror so hard, waiting for it to open up  and reveal another world - one where amazing and magical things were possible - just like in my storybooks.   Now, as an adult, my dreams are both more concrete and more possible.   I am blessed to have a lot of control over my life, but that also means that I am sometimes stymied by the choices, by the forks in the road.  Sometimes I am reluctant to take one  option for fear that the other will be forever lost to me.   And so I am constantly moved, pulled, it feels like, to "tuck things in around the edges."    I want to be a teacher and teach college, but I also want to study reading and writing.   I don't want to give up teaching, but I also can't let go of writing - and I want to write it all - fiction, poetry, magazine articles, non-fiction!   Each one of these seems like the "mirror" into fairyland that I dreamed about as a child - each seems like a road I can't give up.



I suppose the garden also offers an answer to this, although not one that I find totally satisfying: this is not a lesson to be learned once.   Just like most of our lessons, it is not "once and done" and then we are forever changed, or forever wise.   The garden teaches that this is a battle we fight spiral-wise: over and over again, learning as we go.   Each year I feel that tug to cram in variety and to "maximize" by trying to say "yes" to everything.   Sometimes I resist, sometimes I give in.   The garden replies with neutral, non-judgmental feedback.   Where I give plants room and prime space, they thrive.   Where I "tuck in" I do get some of that variety - but it is usually a very small yield for a lot more work helping those marginal plants survive.  

Physically, the garden offers a nice  antidote to this fear and indecision.   Dig the compost.   Shake the sifter.   Feel triceps and stomach muscles and calves work.   Notice the tiny red baby compost worms wriggling.   Notice how  light and airy the compost feels scooped into the ground.   Imagine how big the cabbages might be, and space them all across the sunniest spot in the garden.  Dig into the ground, mixing in the compost.  Imagine how soon the seedling's little yellow cotyledons will fall off or turn green again, or how the seedlings will soon stretch roots down and send out new growth.  With a light, warm rain falling in the darkening  spring twilight, the thoughts of "what if" fade.   As in love, as in work, as in play, it is always good medicine tending to "what is."