Thankfully up and running again.
And also up and running in the garden and in the cupboards. Castenada Lane has not been sold (yet) but will be leased for now to a couple who appear to be just the ticket. And the moving date is tentatively May 15th. MAY 15TH! My heart is racing. All these months of ruminating about journeys and transformations and lah-de-dah and I am suddenly brought up into reality. This isn’t a literary experiment. This isn’t an insightful meditation. This isn’t a reflection on life and change. This is a done deal. This is here and NOW. This is – get on with the nuts and bolts – it’s REAL.
And so I made a list. That is what I do. Robert just plunges ahead and around and gets it done. I have to get some clarity and feel I have some control. After making a very long Check List, I put together a plan. Each day I will spend 3 hours in the garden, 3 hours packing boxes, and 2 hours blogging and checking e-mail. That’s already a full eight hour work day but somehow I will fit in the regular chores and thank the stars I have a personal chef.
VIEW FROM THE TERRACE - LOWER GARDEN
I admit I only spent 2 hours in the garden on this first day of the plan, but the Rosa Mutabulis and the Ghislande de Feligond, and the Oakleaf Hydrangea look positively liberated from the evil Vinca and the abhorrent (unfortunate name) Johnson grass. And that was a good start. I know many people are fond of Vinca and that was obviously the case with the previous owner at Castenada Lane for he was the culprit who planted it. However, he first built an excellent and charming rock wall separating what I call the lower garden from the upper pond garden, and then – go figure – promptly covered it up with vines. I wasn’t even aware of the wall until I started trimming the plant. I felt like the girl in my favorite childhood book, The Secret Garden, unearthing horticultural surprises. Vinca does have a lovely purple flower, and it does have an even lovelier common name – Periwinkle – but I have been fighting it ever since and the best I can say for it is that it is very shallow rooted and easy to pull out.
THE WALL EXPOSED
The Johnson grass – not so much. I must have gotten a seed or a piece in the gallon pot of bamboo I purchased at the San Luis Obispo farmer’s market a few years ago, for it is creeping out from the bamboo across the once ornamental thyme and over into the day lily bed. Every year I fight it back, and every year it keeps on coming. All I can say, like Cosmo, is “ARG, URF, WAH, AUL, ECH”!
But a start was made to turn over the garden in respectable shape and a definite effort began on that set-aside office cupboard where I’ve repeatedly “stashed” and that I’ve been avoiding. The contents now sit all over the office floor, but in sorted stacks of category. And I found some forgotten treasures and rediscovered long missing objects of importance.
Queen of Disks, Cygnet Deck by Kevin Harris
Like one of my son’s missing collages from his Tarot portfolio. This was major.
And the first three boxes are packed, sealed and labeled!
YEAH!
snowbirdredux 