Mowing epiphanies

As I reflect that it has been about a year since I started this blog, I admit to feeling that it is a pretty small deal. I read blogs that are stupendous and riveting, some with photos of hawks, some with  lucid observations on quotations from the full range of contemporary to classical writers, some incisive commentaries on current events, some with photos of children at magical moments, and some with penetrating spiritual and philosophical meditations. I think to myself as I read these blogs, "This is important stuff. This is stimulating."

Then I look at mine. Mostly I write about the garden. It's not recognizably intimate to most readers, I expect, but this is what I have to offer. What could be more intimate than the understanding I carry away from my time in the garden? Do my readers really need to know the specific ups and downs of my days? Time out there is precious to me-- dirty, sweaty, smelly, and sometimes noisy though it is. Sometimes, having finished in the garden for the day or pausing while work on something indoors, I walk out there again to look at something, like a caterpillar, or a new leaf, that I have already looked at less than an hour before. Even with all the mosquitoes right now, I want to see how much the caterpillar has grown since this morning.

Mowing, for example, I have come to realize, is something I find really satisfying. When I am mowing, I get some of my best negative thinking done. I'm walking behind an obnoxiously loud machine and it takes hours. Worry, gnawing resentment, aggravation, and grief are among the feelings with which I have astonished myself while mowing. There used to be one specific place in the garden where, for several years, when I reached it, my thoughts would turn to any of a number of colleagues who really irked me at work. That place is now a flower bed, situations have changed, and I haven't had such specific repeating effects for long time. Now the thoughts come more randomly, and it is rare that an entire mowing session is dominated by negative thinking. Today's thoughts were evenly split between worrying and feeling grateful for several friendships.

This afternoon my mowing was interrupted by an afternoon thundershower. I couldn't be happier about the rain. So many afternoons the clouds go over us and around us without leaving rain. The same geographical factors that have sometimes protected us from the worst of the big storms also keep us drier than other parts of the county. When it is dry, I do emergency watering with a galvanized watering can, taking a drink right to the roots of the most vulnerable plants until the next rain. All that said, my yard is half mowed now. I set out to mow this afternoon feeling unsettled in my mind about the direction the summer is going, and I suppose the half-mowed state of the yard is indicative of the lack of resolution in other areas of life.

Now the rain has stopped and there will be no more mowing today. I will move on to other chores, projects, and diversions. Tomorrow I may have another opportunity to finish what I have started.