This spring-like February has had me out in the garden, raking leaves from around whatever plants have survived January's chill, and watching (with cheer and a bit of trepidation) the daffodils blooming here and there around the yard. Just in the last days the quince blossoms, their passionate pink budding on as-yet darkened stems, join them. Earlier this week, I removed some old wooden frames from a once-raised garden, gotten some help transplanting gardenias and other plants with the rich dirt it once girdled, and, after an eager visit to the ag center, seeded wildflowers in the now-flattened site.
When I woke this morning, however, all the energy this spring weather gave me in the past few days seemed only a dream. It took me a while to gather my wits to figure out the day. I dressed in whatever hung nearby, sat for a while, nothing doing or coming to mind, then went out with a broom to clear away some leaves. (It reminded me of my mother, who, when upset or distracted, would take to sweeping.) My sweeping was lackadaisical, at best.
Some broken pots in the ivy, though, reminded me that, rather than throw them away, I'd had an idea to plant a few succulents in them. Okay...now I had something to do: return to the nursery to get what I needed. A destination, a plan.
Choosing was easy and quick...three in hand, I headed to the register, where a sweet young woman whose accent marked her as an Australian transplant admired my favorite, one funnily called Hen and Chicks. Yesterday being Valentine's Day, it seemed a perfect reminder of a happy, if harried occasion of children, parents, a meal together, too much chocolate and lots of red cards, some entertaining, some dear.
On the way out of the nursery, I found myself in front of the UNC Horizons program for child development and maternal support. Theirs is one of the food banks our PORCH community supports, so on a whim, I went in. I found a woman in the front room sorting books on a table in front of a colorful and well-stocked library for children. A few words with her, and another direction opened: I could interview her, and other PORCH banks, and send photos to our neighborhood each month showing how much-needed their monthly bags of donated food and checks are...pictures, as the saying goes, being often more useful than words.
I drove home wrapped up in these two objectives which had sprung like Athena out of a moody, mind-clouded morning, and then went to work planting the succulents, and making a list of food banks I could contact. I called a friend I hadn't heard from in a while. But slowly, the pale of morning returned, and though usually I'd be in my workroom, pulling together paper, paint, glue, wood, metal...anything in reach...I took a book out to the porch to read instead.
I'd barely opened it, when a new wind pushed through, changing the temperment of the afternoon. Clouds had drifted across the sun since early morning, but this breeze, shaking the last few holding-on leaves across the yard, brought with it a thickening cover of gray, east to west, north to south. My desultory mood returned for real. The book seemed beside the point, and the clouds weren't even bringing any useful rain. I could have taken a walk in the 67 degree F weather, but nothing spurred that on, either. On my phone, I watched, passive, a movie about a young woman forced to return to China to learn to support herself.
It appears that this change in the weather, as well as my cloudiness of mind, is going to last the rest of the day. Over my long years, though, I've learned, that today's blankness prefaces tomorrow's sharper focus. It isn't unusual to need a day of nothing to support the somethings of more energetic life. Great inventions more often begin in boredom or silence...as it happens, something a group of tech-obsessed middle-schoolers are trying to wrap their heads around this week in their critical thinking class.
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| somebody lived here once |
