summer_jackel

Spring's come, and it is beautiful here. I'm outside on the deck pedaling a bike trainer at hour 3 instead of doing it holed up in my bedroom hiding place, thinking ruefully that really, it's time to get my lazy and scared-of-cars butt back out on the road. Exploring around at high speeds is definitely tempting me, but I'm still kind of enjoying staying cozily on my trainer. It's kind of a weird universe where I can find any way to so characterize this activity, but there you are. It's pretty out here, better than being indoors like I have all winter; the air is sweet and velvety and smells like moist earth and the breathing infancy of many plants.

It's a new season. I feel as though I am adjusting to my life, and it to me. It still startles me a little bit to find myself in charge of the care and maintenance of this place, but the freshness of Kestrel's touches here are fading. The grief of this is no longer quite as sharp, though the house remains full of ghosts. Most of them happy, at least, and if I remain tinged with a layer of sadness, it is at least one winter old. It's arrogant to think a love or a grieving might remain fresh forever; water and time erode everything. And anyway, I'm a thing more like a maple leaf than a bit of stone; tough enough, but in autumn made to blaze and fall.

I've been digging up some ferns in the woods beyond my home, mostly from the cohort that starts every winter in places which will become too dry to sustain them. These I transplant about the yard in spots where I hope they will find life more hospitable. Last week, it was half a dozen or so of the lovely native violets that usually spread unobtrusively around in redwood duff. This time of year, they put up small flowers of the most perfect, delicate yellow, and I love them. There's some anxiety; I tried a transplant several years ago, but those violets didn't make it. One week after planting, the current contingent seems to thrive, and I've relaxed a little in my fear of harming these wild and fragile things. Perhaps this time I was more gentle with them.

I put in this mostly-native garden years ago, but recently other things have been taking up my time and that of the triad which once dwelt in this place. The garden has been left mostly to its own devices. It's pretty much fine, which is the great thing about planting natives, but there are definitely places where it could use attention. I'm trying to make up for that now, to tidy the place up a bit, attend some of the holes in the ground cover, mulch things and move big handfulls of earthworms around, encourage ferns.

This morning, my brother, who is also a plant person, scattered poppy seeds all around the place. A season living together as adults, and we are getting used to one another, too; I am pleased to see him experimenting with roots. He knows intellectually that poppies probably won't come up and certainly will never bloom, but I can still see that flash of hope in his eyes.

With that, I can almost feel the ghostly touch of a woman who once came here planting garlic. The afternoon we spent carefully separating those small dormant bulbs, how tenderly we set them in the fresh earth, how happy we were. The garlic grew, but slowly, not enough to be useful or to sustain her. And I wonder with a little pang of sad amusement how many will pass into my life, hoping to plant things which need a brighter sun.

I have learned that it is not so terrible a thing to plant experimentally, or hope, despite varying lifespans and possibilities of success. Ultimately when something cannot grow, it must be released, with thanks or sorrow or wistfulness or whatever, it doesn't matter. Go it must.

I tend what I think is more likely to grow now, and a few turns of season later, I know my soil and sun a little better. I have come to be like this place of shade and ferns and moisture, half-hidden, craving quiet, cool green shade. An odd, specialized, quirky place full of salamanders, bannanna slugs, moss and ferns and mold and fungus. What flowers here is a little odd and very specific. I'm probably not the right match for a lady who needs sunflowers. The little maple trees and the bay laurel, that will come up well enough; plenty of wood sorrel, even a lovely yellow violet now and then.