WAITING AND WANDERING

Putting the Phone Down

For someone who was trying to minimize technology pre2020, Covid time has instead forced me into submission to all things digital. And this hasn’t been a good thing for my personal constitution. I wish I could say after Covid because it would be such a neat and tidy bookend to the last two years when in April and May of 2020 this gorgeous fox family decided to take residence in my back yard and under my barn. Then two years later, this past May a Robin decided to start her home on my front porch.

But it is not after Covid. It is now and I don’t know what we call what we are in.
So instead of fretting about the demise of civility, I do what I can.

I put the phone down and sit.

And wait.

For the irises to pop open. And the zinnia seeds to sprout.
I wait for the petunias to spread low and long across the front border and up over the cracked terracotta pot placed in the middle of the dirt for just this.
I am hopeful that the chamomile I planted two years ago will continue to re-seed and show up again for the future of my tea and homemade eye compresses.

I wait for the sounds of baby robins to hatch, and I wait for Mama robin to start feeding them. I sit in wonderment of where the fox family ended up.

I wander in my own back yard.

And I get lost in a thought about the rain that came in divine perfection after I made all of my plantings. It has rained three more times since and this makes me feel abundantly grateful at the perfection of nature.

I tinker and weed and stare and I move my back furniture around to get it just so. Then I walk through the garden to see what surprises are in store for me.

Where did all this evening primrose come from? I ask the bounty of nature.
Will my butterfly bush actually make it to its full majestic glory before the actual butterflies eat the coned flowers like they think it is corn on the cob?
What is that strange yellow coloring on my sixty-year-old rose bush?
Will the cilantro sprout again like it has done every year in my driveway even though it is not a perennial?

Nature laughs at the funny rules we humans make.