Friday, May 6, 2011

sprang

I was too unmotivated to sit in class, so some kind of slacking seems to be in order, as the third cup of coffee is the charm and I'm finally feeling awake. Too awake to zone out on the last day of class, a class where I already have an "A" and it's not for credit as it is. The rain has replaced the sun that shone all morning, but I think about how it will nourish the soil and seeds in a way that I could not myself.

I spent the morning yesterday after realizing I'd showed up for work as if I was first-shifting rather than second, planting seeds and pulling weeds, trying to turn the dusty back yard full of dead vines and renegade spearmint into something purty, dropping California poppy seeds in between cracks in rock and brick, zinnias and wildflowers on the side and in the back, using the cement blocks between the yard and the fence as de facto planters.

On the other side, I'm doing vegetables again, so I can cook Mediterranean style all summer, living on tabbouleh and pesto, and there's still room that I haven't used yet. Having space is still strange to me after using a 6'X 3' strip last year, and I have lots of unfilled terra cotta pots and planters left behind by the downstairs neighbors meaning that I could do even more than I've done right now.

Being a constant cynic who assumes the worst and impatient on top of that, I never believe that any of this stuff will grow, even though it did last year. It's not unlike my spiritual journey which is fraught with doubt and questioning and expecting the worst even though there's the best to hope for. I know that with sun and water and that strange miracle of nature, that these tiny seeds contain the means to make plants that will flower and fruit and multiply themselves.

4 comments:

Randal Graves said...

For someone who professes to love the learning, skipping class, well, I never, except those few dozen times.

Gonna go out on a limb and assume much greenery, both delicious and pretty. Though poppies? Don't let the DEA find out, they'll want a cut.

Anonymous said...

Long roots moor summer to our side of earth.
I wake: already taller than the green
River-fresh castles of unresting leaf
Where loud birds dash,
It unfolds upward a long breadth, a shine

Wherein all seeds and clouds and winged things
Employ the many-levelled acreage.
Absence with absence makes a travelling angle,
And pressure of the sun
In silence sleeps like equiloaded scales.

Where can I turn except away, knowing
Myself outdistanced, out-invented? what
Reply can the vast flowering strike from us,
Unless it be the one
You make today in London: to be married?

What reply, indeed. If you can't stop reading this and go outside right now, tell me what you're going to do when you can get there.

-P.Larkin

that girl said...

I'm hoping for much delicious and lovely greenerye, of which the Peonage as a whole will benefit.

I'm sure the DEA will be much more busy with the neighbors in the almost-hood.

Randal Graves said...

As long as you don't turn the profit from your greenery into opening a coffee house where drinkers invent and circulate false and calumnious reports to defame our social betters.

Word verification: spocxnen, something to do with Spock, I just can't think of anything clever (shocker). Coffee time.