How’s about a garden post, eh?

I have been furiously working outside- both because the garden needs it, and because I need it. Spring brings joy! Roses! Seedlings! Tomato plants! Nice weather! My daughter’s birthday! And it also brings more grief than any other season. Our anniversary! The day my husband died! The lizard brain dumping adrenaline and anxiety into the system at the back of my head goes: “Something in weather like this almost killed you- “PERHAPS HIGH ALERT IS CALLED FOR HERE?!”

So it is such joy and pain and griefy jitters all tangled together.

But grief won’t take the things I love from me, I won’t let it, so I have been trying to do the things, even when all I want to do is curl into a ball and wait it out, as the lizard brain at the back of my skull wants me to do. I very occasionally know better than a lizard though, so I haven’t been listening to it, as best I can. Please don’t worry though, it’s less “l’appel du vide” (call of the void) and more “l’appel du lit” (call of the bed)- and it helps that the lizard speaks in French… makes it easier to ignore, I find.

Anyway.

I YET AGAIN find myself repeatedly looking at the note in my phone of “things that help” that I made in early grief- and I swear any grief book I write should just be this: Find things that help and write them down because you will forget, over and over and over again.

Get outside/ in the sun

Work up a sweat

Clean

do something you feel good about accomplishing

Stretch

Make the bed

Drink water

Funny how many of those the lizard would approve of, now that I’m looking at it like that…

But anyway. The list, pretty all inclusively, can be ticked off by gardening and weeding and it also is still a thing that brings in those firefly flickers of joy as the first tomato and rose and larkspur and the good bugs of the butterflies and the hummingbird moths and the jumping spiders make me smile.

And while happiness is more than not feeling bad, once I’m up to neutral again its the layering in of small joys that ratchets it up more into true happiness territory. Watch the sun set? Check. While sitting in the garden admiring flowers and cool bugs? Check. Drinking a beer outta an ice cold glass? Check.

It does work. And sure, ease and happiness used to come on their own. But as the Barefoot Contessa says, if homemade isn’t available then store bought (taking effort) is fine.

On to the garden!

i love the brick patio, I really do. It takes damn near constant weeding though. But that is okay, because what are weeds but just plants, and sometimes desirable ones, growing where they are not wanted? So yes, there are always buckets for the compost, but there is also many transplants to be found too. Once I switched from seeing that as annoying to a way of sharing abundance… well. I have given away and transplanted a ton of coreopsis, calendula, various salvias, and others so far this year. And I feel like that is the sharing of abundance that gets to the root of it and does the soul good, you know? Not tithing or giving money, but a sharing of resources and extras. Anyway. I do love doing it.

Here is one of the 4 pots of calendula seedlings I transplanted and potted up from where they sprouted between the bricks- I gave this entire thing to a friend of mine. What wealth, you know? Bounty, is what it is. Bounty.

And so I’ve been weeding and trimming and cutting back and pruning. I did remember to prune the roses around Valentine’s Day too, so they are absolutely going gangbusters right now.

My beautiful Twilight Zone rose with an Apple blossom amaryllis planted in front of it, and while you can’t see it the orange plant behind it is a bougainvillea that is in a pot. iIwalk by the Twilight Zone in the evenings and bop one of the blooms with a finger (of the hand not holding a beer) and go: “you and me both, sister.” And sure, it’s the name and not the blooming or beauty part I’m really speaking to with that, but maybe some of those bits slip through back into me too.

I do plant all of my amaryllis that I grow inside during December in the garden afterwards, and they come back pretty reliably. Not always; snowmageddon killed all of them that were in the ground, but it’s okay. I enjoy them for as long as they stay, and figure as most people toss them after flowering that I’m still winning. Here is the Dancing Queen amaryllis I grew inside in December of 2024- and boy was that such a hard time. And here it is in the garden a year and a bit later. Things do get better. And not all the way, sure. But my god is where I’m at now and where I was the last time I saw this flower such a vastly different place. I am grateful, for sure. And I try to remember this next bit. It wasn’t always like that. And it won’t always be like this. And if that sounds ominous or hopeful… the fun fact is that its both.

One of the jobs I did the day I also did all that patio weeding was to get up on the roof and sweep off two patches of leaves. No matter the storm or wind those patches settle into mats that can only be removed by sweeping them off. Lucas used to do this a couple of times a year, but I only do it once. I HAAAATE this job. We have a steeply peaked metal roof and I find I really like heights less and less as the years go by. So like… this shit. I think it’s my least favorite house job and my mantra the entire time I’m doing it is probably not all that helpful either: “this is scary don’t look down this is scary don’t look down.” May not be the thing ye ol’ nervous system needs, but whatever. You can do anything for 5 minutes. Even scary things. And lo and behold once done the thing is over, so you might as well do it. It checked boxes on accomplishing something I was proud of and working up a (flop) sweat off of my list.

Isn’t it pretty from up there, though? And just to be clear- this is the NOTHING height of 12′ over the laundry room- the peaks START right there to the left in that picture- so I think you can see how my mantra does in fact apply.

But I’m so proud of the garden. Its such not the standard Texas garden in style or plant choices. We really did something here, you know? And it wasn’t easy and still isn’t, but it’s worth every bit of the work. Gardens, children, and marriages are all reflective of the effort you put into them, after all. Where else would I rather be pouring all this sweat- the gym? Thats crazy, do you hear how crazy that sounds!? The GYM.

There is one rose I didn’t prune back this year- and it will result in it having smaller flowers later in the season and needing a bigger chop than usual in August (roses round these here parts get pruned by about a 1/2 to 2/3 in February, and by 1/4 to 1/3 in August. Tis the secret, yo). But that means my beloved Souvenir de la Malmaisson rose is now 6′ tall by 8′ wide… and for once in my damn life I got the spacing right and it perfectly fills in the bed next to where the hammock is. (you can see it before it really got blooming there in the picture above.

I think it’s my favorite rose. Smells amazing, has quartered blooms, and is a true antique rose as its from 1843… it is my oldest rose, in fact. It’s also my rose in how I think about such things (I have one for my husband, ones for our girls, and one for our marriage) but this one? This one is just for me.

I posted those two pics on Instagram and titled them “Who grew it better, me or Empress Josephine’s bitch ass?” And let me tell you- that is the energy I want to bring to all aspects of life again, so I’m going to keep working on it. I’d say use that as my epithet even, aside from (serious here) I already have mine picked out. Someone tell my children to refer back here for it when they need it. All I need is a simple brass plaque with “She loved the stars too much to fear the night” and put it next to my husband’s on the river. That’ll work well enough for me. (it’s a riff off a line an 1868 poem by Sarah Williams). I have, nerd that I am, known what I wanted as an epithet since high school and its been unwavering ever since. I did at one point tell my husband as he needed to know of this plan, and boy did he not enjoy that conversation much, let me tell you! But as the dead are shit for help during funeral planning, I have to tell others this plan of mine. Turns out.

That took a hard left at Albuquerque, isn’t it always the way with me these days?! Sheesh.

Back to the garden.

I was sitting outside the other night and saw one of my FAVORITE animals on the planet- and I’m not even kidding. The Bold Jumping Spiders are so cute, and they’re so intelligent- I just love them. Their coloring can be solid brown, white, black, or any combo- but the black and white stripe ones are tops for me. And the fangs can be all kids of colors too, from green to blue to purple… but look at this handsome one and the matching teal fangs to the chair! Anyway. I moved over to that chair once I noticed him and watched the sun go down and he was running out and tapping my leg with his front legs, trying to figure me out. I started talking to him and he jumped on my arm to look at me! I was SO thrilled- I felt like Snow White or Cinderella with her mice.

He hopped off and ran off on his spider way with all the well wishing I could throw at him- it was great and such a highlight of the week. And anyone that is like AAAAGGGGHHHH to that- please know these are the crows of the spider world, they are highly intelligent, and many, many sane people try to befriend crows… so stop looking at me like that.

Yes I can see the similarity. Don’t think I don’t.

Anyway. So spring is here and I’m outside a lot in the sun and also under the stars and am being surrounded by flowers and the good spiders and butterflies and birds and it is soothing the battered soul.

I’ll be okay, as will we all. Spring is here, after all. Good things to come.

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And a smattering of memes and cat pictures to leave you with here.

Till next time