Here Come the Roses

Today I joined others at Kingman Island to help with invasive plant removal. Licensed destruction can be very satisfying. It was a beautiful to be outside.

There hasn’t been a day in the past two months when I haven’t needed to cover my nose, mouth, and ears because I needed to walk past someone using a leaf blower.
They stink with burning fuel, stir up allergens, and aren’t really any more efficient than a rake and a broom. Why are they so ubiquitous? And why is that I have never seen a woman using one, but I have seen men of all races, ages, and socio-economic status cheerfully using one?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
A view from inside of volunteer begonias in the rain.

This weekend’s work in the garden continues on removing summer plants that are no longer productive to make way for cold weather planting (various greens and root vegetables).
The cherry tomatoes and a couple of the hot peppers are still flowering in addition to fruiting. Those I will leave in place as long as they are producing or until a frost, whichever comes first.
I ruthlessly pulled up all of the other pepper plants, gleaning the last of that cycle of the harvest (some years there are lots of peppers to pickle and roast and enjoy into winter, but not with this summer’s weeks of blasting, arid heat followed by the flooding storms).
With the limited space in my tiny garden, frittering away time or space from sentimentality, attachment, neglect, or lack of knowledge, has a significant impact on the possibility of flourishing. Sometimes I relish my ability to be ruthless in the garden–to tear things up that do not serve, let them go, and invite in new and more nourishing and productive things.
When thought about in relationship to the vastness of possibility, my life is not unlike a tiny and limited garden, the limits being space and time and the particular and peculiar collection of quirks, challenges, and talents that came in this incarnation. Oh to be as ruthless in discarding what does not serve in this life as I can be in the garden.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.