Trying

This partially opened pumpkin blossom reminds me of a witch's hand, grasping at something with her skinny, wrinkled fingers, her long, sharp nails. What is she trying to hold on to? I imagine the shoulder of a child in the dark woods, lost and afraid. I see time, fleeing so swiftly as it does in our aging years, the witchy hand attempting to hold on to it, to stop it from escaping entirely. 

Here's what else I see- I see myself on a bad day, attempting to fold in on myself, to protect myself from whatever the hell it is I think I need protection from. I can see the way I try to present as dangerous and sharp when really, I am just afraid. Or maybe sad. Or perhaps tired. 

Then again I see that flower simply as a sign we need rain. 
I don't know. 
The older I get, the more I know that I do not know much. Not much at all. 

I spent some time in the garden today. There's very little to pick except for Tabasco peppers which are still growing like crazy. The bush is getting close to being as tall as I am and it reminds me of a Christmas tree whose lights are almost but not quite, lined up neatly. 

Their tiny blooms keep their heads down, quite literally, not raising them to the sun but facing the ground, as if they are too shy to show their faces. 
I held this one up to take its picture. 

It was good for me to just be in the garden. To slow down and look carefully enough to see those tiny flowers, to stand in front of the basil and concentrate on the constant blur of bees, darting from bloom to bloom, stopping barely long enough to capture the images with my eyes, much less my camera.

I am not good at that. Not the iPhone's fault, my own inability to coordinate eyes and hands. 

It looked like something had been dragged through the ground where the peas had been planted, the mulch disturbed in what were almost ruts. I asked Glen to go and look and see what he thought and he said it was an armadillo, looking for worms under that mulch. 
Aha. Of course. Armadillos are like tanks, heavy and clumsy, uncaring about leaving the signs of their snuffling and digging. 
Have you ever seen one? They are prehistoric looking. Here's a picture of one that I grabbed off the internet. 

Armored mammals. They nurse their young. That cannot be easy. They are not pretty and they can do a lot of damage. They, like so many things around here, are invasive, having traveled from South America to here over the course of many, many years. I am not sure about this but I think and believe that their main threat is cars. The odds of seeing a dead armadillo on the road are about five hundred times greater than seeing one waddling around the yard. I made up that fact but again, I believe it's true. They sleep mostly in the daytime in the burrows they make. Around here they are often referred to as "possums on the half-shell." 
Until around 12,000 years ago, there were armadillos the size of Volkswagens. I think I would die if I saw one that big. 

I seriously did not set out here to write about armadillos. 

Anyway, I'm glad I spent that time in the garden. It soothed me. 

It was the day to water the porch plants and so I did that. I've mentioned the fact that I need to get some of my plants into bigger pots and since Mr. Moon wasn't here to help me with the giant pots on the swing porch, I did a hermit crab shell swap sort of thing with plants and pots instead of crabs and shells. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's an explanation. As applies to hermit crabs, not plants but same idea. 

I have posted this video at least two other times but hey! It's extremely cool. 

I had four plants I wanted to transplant into roomier pots and that involved a fairly complex process which was hot and tiring and not easy.
I pulled a very dead-looking plant out of a pot on the front porch and because I don't like to give up on a plant without giving it every chance in the world to come back, I planted it directly into the dirt of the kitchen bed, thus freeing up the pot which is an extremely heavy pot and so I had to use the garden cart to haul it and to get the cart where it needed to be for me to put the pot in it I had to trim some sego (murder) palm fronds and so that was a little process. Then I dug out a hydrangea I've had in a pot under the wisteria arbor for years which is just barely making it and has certainly never bloomed there. And of course I replanted that with the other hydrangea and watered all of them. So I had two pots at that point. 

I transplanted a sage plant into a pot that already had oregano in it because...why not? 
Three pots. As for the fourth- I took out a giant begonia rootling that wasn't doing much at all and stuck it in with another giant begonia which is...giant. 
 
And so I finally accomplished what I'd set out to do. 

The Cuban oregano I bought last week. 

My pineapple plant which I started from a pineapple top that had been in a too-small pot that then got broken anyway. It looks about six times bigger now in that one. 

Part of the kalancho that had gotten way out of hand. Don't worry. It won't look like that for long. I cut the long stem into three separate pieces and stuck all the pieces in the dirt. I have a strong feeling all three stem parts will be standing to attention in a short while. 
And what went in the fourth pot? 
A very small piece of a jade plant that I've been keeping alive and not much more in the laundry room for way too long. It needed to get outside in more sun and now it is. 

I did what I could to improve my mood, to lift my spirits. I spent time in the garden, I got a lot of dirt under my fingernails. I planted, I trimmed, I watered. I made executive decisions about things like digging up pinecone lilies to make more room in the kitchen bed. I did not overthink my decision. Mainly because I have a million pinecone lilies.
I took the garbage to the dump. 
I discovered that crows do not care in the least for raisins. 
Oh well. More for me. 

I grieved Dolly Parton some more and did a lot of pondering on why she was so universally loved, how she got so much accomplished, and how she managed to seemingly perform at least once with every musician in the world with joy and respect and perfect make-up and nails.  
I wished for rain. We did not get any. 

I used my wrinkled fingers to grab onto what I could and at the same time, tried to release what I should. 

This is life. 

Love...Ms. Moon