Walking

I don't have much to report as far as gardening goes.  I've managed to get stalled there.  I had been concentrating on cleanup, but my weed eater ran out of line and it took me a couple of weeks to get that fixed.  My husband and I started making serious plans to build a new deck, and I got so excited.  I figured that would be a great jumping off point, but he's been very busy with work, so I'm going to need to move forward and not wait on a project that, realistically, might not happen.  I hate to say that but, I'm a little worried.  I've had my hopes dashed too many times in the past; it's best not to count on things that haven't happened yet.

In the meantime, I'm keeping my eyes open, looking for ideas and possible resources.  I took a walk this morning and stopped to admire the garden of one of my neighbors.

It's nothing fancy, but it's still lovely and quite doable.

So, my plan for now is to keep working on the yard -- someday I will be able to call it a garden, but I am not going to rely solely on gardening and yard-work to meet my fitness goals.  My walk this morning was the first of what I plan to make a daily habit.  That is ambitious given the fact that I live in, what feels like, the rainiest spot in the world, but this is a good time of year to start.

My current morning routine has me shuffling down the hall, grabbing a cup of coffee, and firing up the computer before I can even blink the sleep out of my eyes.  Then I get stuck there, and it takes an act of God or congress to get me out of my chair.  It's going to take planning and effort to change that habit, but it needs to be done.  Last night I set out my clothes, and this morning I was dressed and out the door before doing anything else.  Yay, me!

Valuable Inactivity

This is what my gardening and my fitness routine looks like today. 

Believe it or not, this is actually a step up from what I've been doing for the last week.  This time spent in the sun reading Sunset Magazine served to inspire and wake me up a little.  It also got me out of the house and off the computer.  Oh wait, I'm back.  Well, a quick post and back out in the sun I go!

As I was saying, reading about potential road trips I could take, browsing recipes using fresh ingredients, and drooling over other gardens was a nice retreat.  Little by little I'm going to add more of that to my own life.  Watch and see!

Time to Dig In!

 Whoever watches the wind will not plant;
 whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. 
~Ecclesiastes 11:4


I'm a really good planner.  I plan and plan and plan.  I do my research, gather facts, talk to experts, and comparison shop for supplies.  I can plan all the live-long day, but when it comes to digging in, and in this case, I literally mean digging in, I have a hard time getting off my buh-hind.  I think it's that fear of doing it wrong mixed with a dash of lazy that keeps me from doing the physical work necessary to accomplish my goals.

The other day I was playing around with a new phone app I installed called "The Goddess Tarot".  I reflected on my question, which was "What do I need to do to move forward with my fitness goals?"
I drew Nine of Pentacles.

Instantly I smiled.  She's in a garden!  There's a mountain behind her, some tough work if she's going to climb it, but right now she's not even worrying about that.  Her attention is on the dove lighting on her fingertips, and she has a serene look about her.  To me, the dove represents the Holy Spirit. 

This was just a little sign to me that I'm on the right track with my plan to let God worry about how the work will get done and to get myself in that garden and start digging!  I need to stop fretting about that looming mountain and set my eyes on God.

Paralyzed by Perfectionism

I'm still reading, observing, and planning, but I'm not doing any real gardening.  I've realized I'm about to get stuck in the same trap I end up in every time I decide to start working on a garden.  I have this idea planted somewhere deep in my subconscious that until conditions are perfect I cannot begin a new project. This would explain why, in 20 years, all I've done is think about gardening.

I have this fear that I will plant something or dig something up and it will end up not fitting into the big picture.  In other words, I'm afraid I'll make a mistake. Crazy, huh?  I think we all do this to some degree, but I am deeply entrenched in this perfectionistic paralysis. 

Every year I think about putting a little color in my yard.  I want to put together pretty planters with beautiful flowers that I can enjoy, but I tell myself I can't do that because I have an ugly deck that's falling apart.  I tell myself that I can't put something beautiful on top of something that makes me cringe when I look at it.

Well, today I decided I certainly can put something beautiful anywhere I like, and that maybe that beauty will spread, and a little instant gratification is always nice too.

Gold Breeze Miscanthus, Sunny Dark Florence African Daisy, Fortunia Purple Fairy Bell Petunia

Inspiration?

I'm looking at pictures of backyards and gardens for inspiration, and um, I'm not so inspired.  Inadequate!  That's what I'm feeling. I'm feeling overwhelmed, and I'm thinking this is just another one of those projects I've started but will never finish.

I mean, some people have such a knack and they are dedicated.  They follow through, and stick with their vision until it is realized...

Contemporary Landscape design by San Francisco Architect Feldman Architecture, Inc.

I'm not that kind of person.

I've tried to do the gardening and landscaping thing before.  Like the time I mentioned to a friend that I'd like to create a flower bed in front of my house, and I showed her the bulbs I was ordering.  She got excited for me and even offered her expertise and muscle power!  She came over to my house with her pickup truck early one Saturday morning and we went out and got a load of dirt.

We hauled dirt all morning long, and then we planted..  My neighbor came over to see what we were about, and when I told her I was putting in a flower bed, she said, "Oh, those are a lot of work!"   I didn't care.  The prize would be worth it.  It was so pretty when it all came up, but true to my usual way of doing things, I got tired of weeding and watering and let it go to pot.

After a couple of years, we (my husband and I) planted a couple of shrubs and put beauty bark in, deciding we were not flower bed people.

Then there was the time I was going to put in a vegetable garden.  I didn't have a clue how to start, but figured if I put some cardboard down to kill the grass in the Fall, come Spring I could just dig that baby up, and start planting!

This is as far as I got...

And that was HARD!  So, I quit.

I'm sitting here worrying because I've gone "public" with my plans, and I don't think I have what it takes to do this, but it's in my God box, so no need to fret, right?  I think I'll stop checking out all those "inspirational" websites for a while, though, at least until I get a little momentum going.

My God Box

Not long ago, I was taking a walk with two of my daughters, and we were looking at the pretty yards with their flowers and well manicured lawns.  I joked that if my yard looked that pretty, I'd be a skinny woman.  It takes a lot of physical labor to get a yard to look like that, unless you're able to hire someone to do the work, and even then, SOMEONE is getting skinny!

This year I've been trying  to get back into shape.  Over the last five years, I've let myself go just a teeny tiny bit.  Life has a way of interrupting some of our best work, and I've been on a five year hiatus from all things resembling progress, both spiritually and physically.

I have an internet group of friends that have come together for the purpose of encouraging each other to move our bodies and get or stay healthy and strong.  A couple of them have been talking about their gardening, and I mentioned that I was thinking of tackling my yard and creating a garden as a means of getting into shape.  With the size of my yard, and the amount of work needing done, I'd have months of workouts lined up!

"DO IT! DO IT!" they said, and I decided I would.

Meanwhile, I've been reading a book by Tosha Silver called Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead.  Through funny and sweet stories, Tosha encourages the reader to put their lives in the hands of the Divine and let God lead the way.  It's not a new concept for me, but it's a practice I had discontinued, part of that five-year hiatus, I guess.  One night I was reading, while simultaneously trying to figure out where to start with my yard, when I realized that it was time to put all of this stuff in God's hands.  By, "stuff," I mean my yard, my weight, my house, my finances, ALL of it!

I've tried to do that before, but I've never really given it to God.  I pray about it, ask for help, and then go right on worrying about what I'm going to do about the whole thing.  Somehow a switch has been flipped in my brain, though, and I'm getting the inkling of a idea about how to receive help and not fret so much.

Enter the God box.  In one of the chapters of the book, Tosha writes about a practice she has adopted.  You write down whatever is bothering you and put it in the box.  Then whenever you start to worry about that problem or agonize about what to do, you remind yourself, "It's in the Box. It's done."

The box can be any kind of container.  I chose a box that belonged to my grandfather.  After he died, my mom and dad brought home a few things that belonged to him for each of us to have as remembrances, and one of the things I received was a box.  When I read about the God box, I thought of it right away.

So, when I worry about my yard, my health, or anything else, I remember that I've given this problem to God, and he will take care of it one way or another.  "It's in the box."

Ruthless Pruning

Following the advice of a friend, I decided to start with this train wreck of a rosebush by the corner of the house. My intention was to prune it, hoping it would still produce some blooms this Summer.

It was really hard work, not helped at all by the fact that all I had to prune it with was an old, rusty, dull branch trimmer with wooden handles that kept falling off.  It was hot, and I became increasingly grumpy and resentful as I worked.  My husband and I have made many plans through the years to do something with the backyard, but neither of us have ever followed through on those plans.  So, I was saturating myself with negative thinking.  Why am I the one that always has to get the ball rolling on big projects?  This is SO hard.  This is a dream I am never going to be able to accomplish.  It's too much, too big, too expensive, and I'm all alone.

 

In my fury, I ended up chopping the whole thing down.  I don't think it would have been any different even if I had taken more care.  The branches were all long and leggy with leaves only at the very top.  Most of the branches were dead.

So, I'm watering and fertilizing it, and hoping for the best.

When I was done with the hack-job trimming, I was sweaty and mad.  I took a shower and hopped in my car with no destination in mind.  Well, I had one destination in mind.  I was starving, and Taco Bell was ringing my name.

While I was driving, I suddenly remembered that this backyard adventure was my idea, and my intention was to rely on God to open the way for me to accomplish it, not to grumble and whine because my husband didn't immediately jump to my recuse and do what neither of us has been able to do in over two decades.  I felt a peace wash over me because I knew that the way has already been made, and all I have to do is follow the divine leads.

I grabbed a crispy burrito and went to park next door so I could eat and think.  I prayed and asked that the right resources, helpers, and advice would come to me to turn my backyard into a beautiful sanctuary, and then I noticed that I was parked in the library parking lot!

I came home cheerful and with a big stack of books about gardening and landscaping.  I plopped onto the bed next to my husband who was watching TV there, and together we browsed through the books.  Later I noticed him online browsing deck designing websites.

Help has arrived!

The change in my own attitude was my first miracle on this journey.

I almost forgot...on the library bulletin board there was a flyer for a garden conservatory preservation project   close by that I can check out for inspiration and to buy plants when I get that far.  More serendipity. I plan to visit soon!

Not Exactly A Garden Blog

I am embarking on a new journey, and a new journey calls for a new blog, don't you think?  I have chosen gardening as a vehicle to connect with God, get healthy, and overcome the mental, emotional, and spiritual roadblocks I have allowed to keep me from being my perfect and divinely created self.

I could have chosen any vehicle really, so why gardening?  Well, I have an overwhelmingly big backyard that is overgrown in spots, suffering from neglect and has absolutely no existing landscaping. Besides that, I have very little disposable income, I'm really out of shape, and I have almost no knowledge of gardening whatsoever.

I can hear you thinking, "Then why, on Earth, would you chose gardening?  Aren't you setting yourself up for a fall?"

Maybe.  I may fall flat on my face, but as I said, this is a vehicle to connect with God, and what better way than by experiencing miracles?  And that is what I'm expecting.  I'm expecting to make my yard a sanctuary, no matter how long it takes, and in the process, I'm expecting to grow stronger and happier and healthier.  It's already in my God box. (More about my God box later!)

So, are you ready to see what I have to work with?