staying home in this season of solidarity in solitude...

Yesterday was warm and calm. Today is cool and gray. I'm told tomorrow will be sunny and sweet. We shall see. Whatever weather emerges I will be at work in our garden just as I was yesterday and today. We made the decision to finally purchase an electric chop saw this weekend so that I could build new garden boxes for the terraces. I built three yesterday - one is 5 x 4, two are 4 x 4 - and each is DEEP (hence the essence of terracing.) I had to rebuild the two smaller boxes today and that was edifying in a humbling kind of way. But they are all now sturdy, reasonably attractive and ready for compost and fresh soil. Later this week we'll do a check re: nutrients, pH level and acidity and maybe even get some plants in the ground. 

Over the winter my modest stone walkway collapsed when the snow decimated the retaining wall. That's my next project - and figuring out what type of flowers to pant in front of each garden box - is right up there, too. As the week warms, we'll get the bulbs and seeds in the ground as well. This spring and summer, the seasons of contagion for those of us in North America, will see no travel. We had planned a 25th anniversary magical, mystery tour to Prince Edward's Island and Halifax but that now awaits health reports and who knows what else? So the next five months will be spent at the homestead rather than exploring Canada. One thing this time of solidarity in solitude is reinforcing in me is the absolute necessity of letting go of expectations. That's always been a challenge for me. Now, with nearly two months to get good at it, let's say it is still a work in progress. Perhaps that's why I read and reread Carrie Newcomer's poem, "A Permeable Life," from time to time. 

I want to leave enough room in my heart
For the unexpected,
For the mistake that becomes knowing,
For knowing that becomes wonder,
For wonder that makes everything porous, 
Allowing in and out
All available light.

An impermeable life is full to the edges,
But only to the edges.
It is a limited thing.
Like the pause at the center of the breath,
Neither releasing or inviting,
With no hollow spaces
For longing and possibility.

I would rather live unlocked,
And more often than not astonished,
Which is possible
If I am willing to surrender
What I already think I know.
So I will stay open
And companionably friendly,
With all that presses out from the heart
And comes in at a slant
And shimmers just below
The surface of things.

So rather than the woods of the Eastern Townships and jazz festivals in Ottawa and Montreal, ours will be a season of seeing the flowers emerge rather than discovering them half gone. It will be a quiet time with space to do regular weeding and tending the lawn. There will be small joys and great grieving and a lot of silence in-between. Today I am sore and stiff from carrying lumber, bending and sawing, building and rebuilding and all the rest. It is a good pain though and I am grateful to be alive. Tomorrow, Di and I will celebrate 25 years of marriage. Thanks be to God.