Ground Covered

I am not thriving - not lamenting, or asking for sympathy, just stating the facts. I am almost dreading going to bed because trying to sleep has been a torturous exercise. I'm in pain. I am not loving my weight and I have zero inclination to exercise. I'm too hot everywhere all the time, even with AC and multiple fans. I am in that meme where you're riding a bike and the bike is on fire and everything is on fire because you're in hell. I am in the centre of a fiery triangle of grief, perimenopause and pandemic - feel more like a pentagram. I'm not a lover of summer weather at the best of times - right now it's making me feel even more claustrophobic. I want out of the heat and out of my skin and out of my life for a few seconds.

Oh well.

So gardening. How do you feel about gardening? I have a similar love/hate relationship dynamic going on with gardening to the one I have with air conditioning. Basically when we started lockdown I threw open our bedroom windows and left them open for two months. Sometimes I woke up with snowflakes on my reading chair. Matt slept in a hoodie. It was amazing. I absolutely hate when I have to start closing the windows because of air conditioning, I resist it as long as possible because I hate feeling sealed inside and not being able to get any fresh air.

And then gardening. I always start with such optimism. I will shovel, and weed, and be one with the earthy earth, and plunge my hands into the living dirt, and lovingly tend the flowers and herbs and vegetables!

Well fuck, you guys, I don't know WHAT THE FUCK I'm doing! I could read some books or watch some Youtube stuff, but I never think of that in time, and then it's the goddamned May 2-4 weekend and my mother is frowning disapprovingly at my empty front flower bed and I'm panic-buying shit without reading the information tags again. Full sun? Part sun? Annual? Perennial? Even worse, this year I was ordering stuff online, like THAT was ever going to go well. I keep fucking buying stuff that I think is just a pretty flower and Matt says uh, that's a shrub. And reading is supposed to be my thing, you guys, this is not really defensible.

Get a load of this action before I kill them, or myself trying to keep them alive

I bring it all home and plant everything taking the blind faith approach - here I will thrust you and here you will thrive, or not, whatever, I'm not invested, you can be replaced. How do you know how deep a hole to dig? I start digging and then trying to stick the root ball in and it's not deep enough, and then suddenly it's too deep, like obviously the roots have to be buried but the stems aren't supposed to be buried and WHAT ARE THE RULES?

I have gardening gloves because we have those giant evil goddamned nettle things that grow six feet while your back is turned and look like they could eat you and have four-inch long sharp spikes, but I hate the feel of gardening gloves, so I put them on and then take them off and do stuff and then put my dirty hands back in the gloves and then everything is black. Same with my sandals - dirt flies into them, or I take them off and put them back on, or I wander out with no shoes to do one thing and stay out. Also, I say I'm going out for half an hour to pull a few weeds and water and then I get in the groove and Matt has to come out and push me, bug-bitten and wild-haired and covered in mud and blood back into the house.

But that thing, where flowers look totally dead and you water them and fifteen minutes later they are standing up and all dewy and perfect-looking? That will never not be magical to me. I am a sucker for the stupid zombie flowers.

Matt planted seeds before he left for Thunder Bay - SEEDS. Cucumbers and pepper and lettuce. That was foolishly optimistic enough, considering our growing season. Then I realized that he was gone and I really needed to get the garden in, and with one practically useless arm I was going to have to ask for help, which I don't do that often and am bad at. I explained the situation to Eve and what an idiot I was not to have asked before, because she is a mini-OCD-me and when she weeds, she WEEDS. She did the front bed, and I planted it. She did part of the back bed, and I finished it and then planted. I said I might ask for some help for the herb bed the next day. She did it before I got up and, um, didn't realize that there were seeds planted and a couple of the centimetre-high green things weren't, strictly speaking weeds. Oops.

Can you see the Gerbera Daisies? This is the first year they lasted for more than two days without something eating them AND a couple of NEW flowers grew - usually I buy them thinking of them as cut flowers, once they're gone they're not coming back. On the other hand, I think that thing in the front on the right might be a begonia that is frying to a crisp in the son. Oops again.

I feel like I should have some inspirational message to end on - the earth putting forth new growth, nurturing new life, rebirth, blah blah. I got nothing. I wish I had some weed.