Immersed in Fertilizer

Sometimes there is nothing else to do, except to just accept that fertilizer, stinky and choking and gag-worthy, is the foundation for growth.

I try…

We speak, we falter and then change the subject and underneath we are both thinking about the weeds but ignoring them for the beauty of the flowers.

We share, a connection rebuilt, a bridge shored up, a paddle retrieved from the creek… and even in the tenseness there is comfort.

But I must say… why was I the one to apologize?  Why were YOU the one to nod your head, sigh, and tell me that forgiveness was a process.  Do you not, will you ever, is it possible… that you could see your own forest in spite of the trees?

Why is it that I can point out the storm, coming in from the south, and you can point to the clear sky in the north and say, “Well, if it wern’t clear there, the storm wouldn’t come” or “There is a breeze offshore created by the pull of the moon and the shifting global economy so we should expect a lot of storms and be prepared to meet them”.

Could you never admit that your storm, your fury unleashed, your fragile climate so uncontrolled, is at the root of the damage done?  That possibly my original garden plan was not up to the standards required, but that it was the storm that destroyed the garden, and not the flimsy design?

Anger wells underneath the frail tenuous peace… uncertainty bubbles like a slow simmer of toxic chemicals over a bunsen burner, looking so much like a healing chicken soup but smelling so much like the regurgitated remains of ecoli infested vegetation… deadly.

And you sleep, well satisfied, having decided that your garden is just fine the way it is… while I stomp around my fresh fill dirt, kicking at rocks and cursing at the tunneling rodents and wondering why it is that I have to even bother caring so much.  T’would be so much easier to just let it all go.

 

When all else fails, try try again…

…or just burn the fucker down.

I went home… I slept in my bed… alone. And I thought it felt awful, tense and stressfull.  I was trapped in there and I hated it and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it again… but then I came back again anyway just because I really did want to devote myself  to us… and I woke you up and asked you to sleep in the bed with me… just to be there, not for anything other than the sake of being spouses.  And it was good and sweet.  And I wanted it to go on… but then it just all went flying out the window. 

Too Much Fertilizer burns out the soil completely.  I’m burnt.

Nothing is growing here in this garden and the root of that one weed last week disrupted soil all over the entire garden, dropping the ornamental shrubs one at a time leaving just destruction and waste in it’s path.  Damn those weeds and that cheap store bought fertilizer.  Never again…

I hate how quickly the sticker bush weeds grow.  One minute you get a small fragile self twining vine with soft hair like coverings and the beginnings of a bloom… and the next minute it’s a full blown stinky, prickly, seeded and self fertilizing plant.

I rip it from the soil, pulling it out, roots and all.  It stubbornly hangs on as ferociously as it can, and then gives way.  Just like my sprit and faith… willful but giving way every time.

To one of my gardeners, thank you for the air mattress, the comforter, the wine. Thank you for listening, empathizing, offering suggestons… thank you for the house keys.  You may never know how much that means to me… But God does.  And so do I. 

And to the gardener who helps me plant the pretties- thanks for being my “family”… my “person”!  I couldn’t do this without you.