gardening, can you dig it

I've dirt under my fingernails and am in bad need of a pedicure.

In other words everything is bliss.

I'm playing in the dirt which is my favourite place to play.

When I started doing big girl things like paying a mortgage I found I had fallen in love with gardening. It was quite unexpected, given my fear of spiders and disdain of Crocs but it is what it is.

And when we moved from our first house to our new build almost two years ago I thought my heart would break from having to leave my gardens, we had grown up together you see.

But my heart has healed and I'm ready to love another.

I prefer domesticating

Because I refuse to be Tamed. But the Insanity part totally applies, although quirky sounds less desparate.

I'm like one of those dog/wolf hybrids. Sure I'll let you pet me and I probably won't poop on the floor, but I might bite the heads off your chickens if not watched closely.

So today I'm biting the heads off chickens over at Taming Insanity. Its really less bloody than you think.

word to your mother

As I sit here drinking cold coffee because I spent 30 minutes trying to put cream on a rashy 3 year old instead of drinking it hot, while my husband negotiates with said 3 year old to pick up all 27 cars that same 3 year old lined up along the hall, I remember just how badly I wanted it. Its these rashy, messy, looking like a PSA for birth control times that I need to remember just that. I wanted this. So badly.

I wrote the following post last Mother's Day so that I wouldn't forget. I read it sometimes.

There was a time when nothing was funny, when there was no jokes, no smiles. When the technician standing in front of the monitor, holding the wand shook her head, just slightly but I saw it. And she said to go home and wait for my midwife to call. And so commenced the longest I had ever gone without laughing.

There was a time when I sat on my couch and learned that it was not to be, as sometimes happens. When I cried into his chest and could not look into his blues eyes. When we held each other and were silenced in our mutual loss.

There was a time when women hearing of it, reached out their hands from near and far as women are apt to do when one of their own is hurting. When hands folded me into arms, hands wiped my tears and sometimes those of their own, hands laid my head into laps and stroked my hair, hands picked up phones and whispered comforting words.

There was a time when my mother was called and said she would be there in two hours, which is extraordinary because she lived three hours away. And she sailed through my door like a Spanish galleon in full mast. I'm stealing from Lucy Maude Montgomery's description of Cornelia Bryant here, but such a description is fitting to how my mother descended upon us, cleaning and cooking spaghetti sauce. And she put me to bed and sat with me until I found sleep. Not once did I see her cry, which I was thankful for. There are many things of which I can endure, my mother's tears not being one of them.

There was a time when I did not go to work for many days and it was over. The midwife came and held my hand, touched my cheek. She took my blood reasoning that it would already be done for when I got pregnant again. I was grateful for the when instead of the if, sometimes conjunctions make all the difference.

There was a time when I lay in bed and when that was over I worked in my garden. Gardening as therapy is solely underestimated. I planted a clematis and moved iris bulbs from the patch behind the shed. The clematis never grew, clematis being finicky until they take root, only then will they become hardy. Iris bulbs are different, only needing of gentle hands to place them into the soil where they will bloom just as though they had always been there. Finding happiness in iris being a sweet foreshadowing of things to come.

There was a time when my grief was surprising, the difference nine weeks had made. And upon hearing this a friend with more motherly wisdom than I would ever have, said that for some of us we as mothers emerge at the sight of two pink lines and are forever changed because of it.

With motherhood comes great joy and great sorrow.

There was a time four years ago this May, at the cusp of twenty eight, I only had had the sorrow and it changed me. For without it I would not be the mother I am today.

And now is when I go snuggle babies, sleepy from their naps. And nuzzle their heads which will smell of spaghetti and feel their hands on my cheeks. Because that is what time it is now.

Sometimes I read it a lot.