This was the summer I finally was going to get my vegetable garden going again.
I got out soon as the ground could be worked in May to reclaim my 20 x 15-foot patch—beautifully situated in full sun— from the plethora of weeds spreading rampant and happy in the rich earth.
I pulled weeds, turned over soil and tackled several virtually indestructible sumacs that had sprung up, one in the middle of the stand of rhubarb at the garden’s edge. This rhubarb is the only non-weed in my garden besides a small stand of obstinate chives. I trimmed back the hemlock boughs and sawed down three maple saplings, saving their slender trunks for a rustic arbor I imagine creating someday.
Land cleared, I was ready! I went to the greenhouses around the corner and filled my wagon with baby broccoli plants, red and buttercrunch lettuce in six packs, celery, collards, marigolds, and basil. I would come back for the kale, cherry tomato, parsley, cucumber, and watermelon plants, for a few varieties of squash, and go somewhere else to find cilantro and arugula.
Finally, after a few dormant years, my garden would thrive and me with it.
That’s what I thought.
First, there was the groundhog I spotted from a second floor window early one morning. He or she was squatting a few yards from my fertile rectangle. I had competed with one in the past who always managed, with uncanny precision, to beat me to the harvest.
I googled groundhog, aka woodchuck, seeking how to free my garden of his presence. I decided against relying exclusively on asking him respectfully to leave, or getting a gun, or planting a bomb in his tunnel (which I had discovered to be under my pantry), or making woodchuck steaks (recipes in an old Mother Jones magazine article). Instead, I chose option E: setting a trap–one with a heart.
Casey, the kind, steady, straw-hatted man who comes to cut my grass with his battery-powered mower, was the one who actually suggested option E after I shared my woodchuck woe with him. Casey had a Havahart trap, said I could borrow it, brought it by and taught me how to set it. He suggested our bait be fresh lettuce and strawberries. “A tasty summer salad,” I joked, feeling so relieved to have a companion in this process. The plan was that I would check the trap several times a day. If we could trap the fellow (ma’am?), Casey would take him or her for a ride and then open the trapdoor far from my future garden. (Shhh, trapping and transporting a groundhog may not be legal in Massachusetts. But killing one is?!)
Meanwhile…
I started waking up with numb fingers in my left hand, pain and weakness in my right. Some mornings my right hand was so weak; I couldn’t unscrew the lid of my juice extractor to get to my green drink. Long story short: I have nerve stuff going on in my left “precision” hand and a very sore, arthritic, (oy) thumb joint in the right, my “strength” hand– distinctions and diagnoses I have learned since starting physical therapy.
So the weeds are reclaiming my garden again this season.
But I am not defeated.
I will not be harvesting the fresh vegetables I could practically taste in my imagination, but I am harvesting fruits of kindness I might not have tasted otherwise.
Casey, almost 60, is the first of these sweet gifts.
Early this morning I placed an SOS (Save Our Skunk) that was also a GROSS (Get Rid of Skunk Soon!) call to Casey. He wasn’t home so I left a message, thinking it might be ours before he would get it. Twenty minutes later, Casey pulled up in his red pickup. A broad smile on his face and blue tarp in hand, he started walking slowly, unfazed, towards the scene of the action. I hung back as he approached the trap, listening him to speak reassuringly to the mound of white fluff that, until today, I had only considered a threatening, unlikeable creature. The animal was reportedly napping, around him the evidence he’d been digging frantically to free himself. Casey propped the door open. Skunk did not leave.
“Just let me nap.” Casey said with a chuckle. “If he’d been a raccoon, you would have seen him shoot out of there. Don’t worry, he’ll leave tonight if he doesn’t wake up sooner.” Casey got up off his knees, beckoning me closer. When I asked him why he wasn’t worried about getting sprayed, he explained that there’s some warning first. The skunk would have been acting agitated. But clearly he wasn’t.
Before Casey left, we positioned a rock at the mouth of the groundhog’s tunnel beneath my pantry to confirm the critter’s presence or absence. In two weeks, neither a delectable salad of strawberries and lettuce nor a paste of peanut butter and oats had baited him. We made a plan for me to call Casey in the morning after Skunk would likely have vacated and Woodchuck might have inadvertently revealed himself.
I told Casey he was my hero.
What I did not think to say then, but can taste now (breakfasting on gratitude), is that I am being given not only needed support, but also Casey’s generous good-spiritedness.
In addition, as I relinquish the harvest of cherry tomatoes sweet as candy, summer squash that tastes like sunshine, and the glee of discovering a hidden melon swelling on its vine beneath a broad leaf umbrella, I know there are other immeasurable delights I am harvesting.
I am being nurtured by my soft-spoken physical therapist Mary, who is beginning to fathom the healer she is beyond the clinician she was trained to be. I am receiving the refined skill, intuition and love of my chiropractor Linda, a passionate, petite and muscular angel with an indelible New York accent and hugs that align spines. I have met Jen, who dips my hands in wax twice a week and, with compassion, educates and challenges me to be more mindful of my hands, of how they serve me and how I can serve them. And there’s Jeff, the embodiment of neighborliness in an age where too busy is the new everything.
Being thwarted has led me down paths I would not have taken, to rendezvous with souls I might not otherwise have rendezvoused with. I have given up certain plans to embrace others. I am choosing to witness, to feel gratitude, appreciation, even curiosity, rather than to choose regret, self-blame or any of the other bummer feelings I might have entertained in the past, whole parties of them. It’s more fun this way. Much. I get to lift my gaze and view the garden of my life–beyond a small patch of weeds, doing what weeds do. I get to be a garden, cultivated by love.
A CONTEMPLATION (and for those who might like to write into this) A WRITING SPARK:
Recall a time you felt thwarted
Thwarted defined:
1. To prevent the occurrence, realization, or attainment of:
2. To oppose and defeat the efforts, plans, or ambitions of.
Synonyms: disappointed, discomfited, foiled, frustrated, defeated, unsuccessful, having failed or having an unfavorable outcome
When did you feel thwarted? Might be you thwarted yourself or felt thwarted by circumstances, your body, age, an individual, your mind or emotions… Could be a “big” deal or it might be a seemingly “small” deal. Long ago or happening now…
What’s the harvest you received (are receiving) instead?
What paths opened up before you, perhaps other than the ones you thought you would walk? Opportunities, lessons, surprises, even delights?
G'Mar Chatima Tova
I close with this customary greeting whose literal meaning is: "a good final sealing." I will add to that: May you know the love of which you are made. What better than to know this?
With gratitude,
Ani
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…your dad’s… and my dad’s, too, in his own way, who has been so present in my life in a myriad of circumstances since his passing in 2012, present now, especially now and more than ever. It’s such a gift, form and formlessness merging, uniting, bringing messages of joy and liberation.
We–all of us and me, too–are so quick to discount the ethereal, the spiritual in this world where science and theories and rationality prevail even though soul is our very identity, even though we know deep in our hearts that our short time here on this planet will be over in the twinkling of an eye. Yes, our life will continue. In the eternity of life it’s really just a split second that we have on this earth plane.
It *was* your dad. It was and was and *is*, of that I am certain.
Rejoice, rejoice, oh rejoice for he is *free*
United in Love, in the great and wondrous Mystery, in the seen and the unseen, in the tangible and the intangible, O-N-E
Anne
Oh, Anne, gorgeous and wise words. Much appreciated!
I am moved by so much you say… about form and formlessness merging…about our split second on earth…
May we continue to rejoice in the mystery of the tangible and intangible ONE.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share this way. I believe what you’ve shared will be uplifting for others.
Ani
When I was at the Conservatory in school as a piano major, in my last year, fourth year, I just couldn’t practice the piano in a concentrated way. Sometimes I would go to the practice room and cry, and I was realizing that I never did want to be a performer. That is what I thought I would be expected to be if I finished school, which I did want to do, but I really didn’t want to do it because it made no sense to me. While the piano had been my whole life since I was about 12, now that I was expected to do something practical with it,make money, be a performer or something, I realized I didn’t want to do any of that.
I suppose I had thought that time would make me get over stage fright, but now that I was close to graduation I thought I’d rather dig ditches than be a performer, not that I was all that proficient in in some ways, but music was my first love and I was quitting music school. I would have passed everything but my piano exams which I would have failed anyway because I was going to the practice room and crying instead of practicing.
Left to myself, I was fine about leaving music school in the state I was in ,but nobody around me was accepting of the idea,least of all, my parents. But I did quit school because it was the only choice I was capable of making without crying and feeling music owed me nothing, like a degree,or money, or anything. It was its own reward but now we were parting. It was almost like a divorce, not because I didn’t love it, but because I just couldn’t do it anymore happily. To say that nobody around me was thrilled with my state of mind is a very big understatement.
Now, having left school, I had to get a job to survive but had no practical experience at anything and knew I had to get a job doing something even though I didn’t know how to do anything. Otherwise I would have to go home to my parents’ house to live, which I did not want to do, especially since now they were not happy with me.
One of my housemates had a summer job where there were job openings circulated among the employees first, and my housemate told me that. I applied for a job in the keypunch dept. not knowing a thing about how to do keypunch. When asked about my keypunch experience, I said I didn’t have any but that my sister knew keypunch and could teach me. Don’t ask me how I had the nerve to say that, but fortunately the woman interviewing me did not laugh in my face. and offered me a job in the keypunch dept. verifying the work of the keypunchers and balancing the books daily, weekly and monthly. I was to be a human verifying machine because they couldn’t afford to buy an actual verifying machine. I was thrilled, so excited to be this human thing that could make money. And they liked me. It was constant work all day, but I was so happy I could be financially independent, which I never had been before, always supported by my parents. I would never have to have stage fright again, never have to make money like that.
While it didn’t bypass others that I had gotten divorced from my childhood love, music, it did bypass me. It felt to me more like a chapter in a book than a divorce, but there would be other chapters, and I was not unhappy about that.
Dear Lorraine,
Thank you for accepting my invitation to contemplate the topic of this post and for sharing so openly and vulnerably.
I am always heartened and inspired by by the courage it takes to follow what one feels is right in the face of dissenting voices—probably the hardest to walk through, those within us. In your case though, sounds like the voices within you were aligned with your taking a different path than the expected.
Also intriguing to hear talking about Music not owing you anything in relation to making a living at one’s art.
Thank you, thank you for taking the time to share so abundantly!
Ani
What a beautiful sharing. I love how you are able to find the beauty and positive when it could easily be the opposite. I have realized that I can often “default” to mild depression. Last night my husband asked me what I was feeling, if it was sadness or tired. I was relaxing, an unusual activity for me, and it was hard for me to even to tell what I was feeling. It is an easily flipped coin. Here I was, looking at the ocean from a condo up high with a gorgeous view, a gift I have been lucky enough to receive. How could I have felt anything but overflowing joy to have a loving husband by my side, a magnificent home near the beach and time to enjoy it? I was tired. And I immediately felt such deep joy. Without his question, I might have allowed my thoughts to go in a different direction. I could have ruminated on so many other things. Thank you for reminding us all how to find joy and love in every action and to see the gifts others give us.
Rochelle,
Thank you, thank you for sharing so honestly about a default many of us experience and how, sometimes, pausing and becoming aware can allow for another choice to be made in the moment.
One of the blessings I am finding (that I did not really fathom as well in my younger years nor was I really shown) is the option to choose in moments such as these.
I have also discovered that when I can’t seem to choose a more “positive” feeling, I can choose to feel compassion and acceptance for that fact——which immediately softens everything.
Thanks for taking the time to share here!
Ani