Low Pressure Front

It’s always hanging on the horizon, the storm and it’s black clouds and it’s undercurrent of pressure.  The sticky uncomfortable way it stills the air and brings the scent of something far away… a low pressure front coming through.

Sometimes we need the rain.  The rain seeps down deep into the soil and makes things grow.  It provides moisture for the burrowing and tunneling creatures.  We need the rain.  I don’t mind the rain – but I don’t like that pressure and fullness before it comes.

Sometimes the anticipation of the storm lasts a long time and we scurry to prepare with extra supplies to prevent too much damage.  The feelings build and build and then a wind comes and pushes the storm off to another direction.  We are left with extra supplies and absolutely nothing else.  No rain, furied wind and the release that comes when the storm breaks.

Sometimes the storm comes so quick and we are so unprepared.  It blows through and detroys everything in it’s path and we are defenseless and crippled in our own helpless humanity.  Surveying the ravaged land we decide: do we wait and see what will grow and what has gone?  Do we move the garden to a new spot?  Do we decide to keep our garden in small portable planters safely on our deck?  Or do we go out with our rakes and shovels, overturning littered soil and adding fresh rich fertilizer, making long even rows and carefully dropping in new seeds, new transplants, and redesigning it.  It may look different, but it’s still a garden.

My storm came… it built up, that low pressure feeling forever, the clouds rolling in the distance, the scent of rain in the air.  I saw that storm and I tried to prepare but as time passed I got used to the low pressure feeling, the image of those rolling clouds out on the horizon became normal.  And when it finally broke, I wasn’t ready at all.

Do I replant? Do I wait and see what grows? Do I redesign?  Do I decide to never grow a garden again?

It’s hard work, this growing and weeding and recovering.  I’m sweaty and tired and bone weary now.   The air cleared briefly, just long enough to truly reveal the damage, but the clouds are back and they cover up the worst of it, softening the way the ugly garden looks… making it all so deceptive.

You see it don’t you?  The ruined plantings, the trash that lies littered all over, piles of dead broken branches tripping you up… or do you just look up, and see the sky and think, “oh look, it’s a clear day above us!”

Truth

When someone says, “This is the most important thing to focus on” I have, in the past, always agreed.  Yes, mm-hmm, that’s right, yes, that thing IS the most important one.  And all the energy I’ve been spending on the other thing is a waste of time, is so glaringly wrong, and how could I have not seen that?

I was showing my messy overgrown garden to someone and they pointed out a particular corner that was looking particularly pathetic.  “Look! That is where you should start. You definitely need to focus on that and then everything else will just come together.  See?”  I began to nod my head but then realized that I didn’t have to agree.  This is MY garden.  No one else knows how to work it but me.

I think I need to start clearing out all the weeds first.  I sort of started weeding a couple of years ago but it was in a random aimless halfhearted kind of way.  I pulled out one over there, a few in the middle, and raked up some of the soil.  It was boring and tedious and the damn weeds just came right back.  I finally began reading a really great gardening book and I am still reading it, but slowly I’m gathering up ideas and plans, choosing what actions to take during which season.

If I agree with someone else’s idea of where to start, then I’m just doing the grunt work of building someone elses garden.  I want to work on my own garden.  I am going to have a garden full of peace and light, full of small hidden treasures and some well chosen anchor plants and borders.  It will be lovely… I can see it already in my heart.  But first, for me, is pulling weeds.

This is gonna take some work.