Mother Nature

Today is one of those strange days. You know what I mean. It is incredibly gorgeous here in the Northeast. Tom and I were outside before in the back yard. He was breaking a sweat and cleaning up the old stuff that has seen better days like my once white picket fence around my humble garden. Of course I was just sitting in the chair watching him with a small praying hands statue in my hand that I had to package up and mail out to someone who purchased it. Tom was just full of ideas about what to do to landscape the yard, which is unfortunately filled with poison ivy. I used to have a beautiful backyard until the last neighbor who lived next door (a doctor in residency) let his yard go wilder than kids on Spring break and it overtook my yard. I spent many an hour in my yard, pruning, trimming, planting, shoveling, seeding, watering and beautifying and in the 3 years that he was here his grapevines, mint, honeysuckle and any other vine that could take root slowly but surely strangled almost every blade of grass in my yard. That was in the years before I got sick and still worked a full-time job as a construction loan administrator. Then January 2009 came and my life that I once lived ended. That was when I became horribly, devastatingly, mysteriously ill and was flat on my back for all of that year and most of the next. Tom mowed, but that was about all that got done back then. But, we got a new neighbor in August of that year also. A new old neighbor; someone who had moved back to this one from another. She asked if I minded if she put up a fence (which was just fine with me) and horror of horrors, rip out the grass in the front and brick it all up. With a lump in my throat I agreed to that. I loved my grass and the garden before that. The doctor had insisted that we get rid of the flourishing garden (I was the only one maintaining it anyway) so I folded like a card table and agreed. Well, now it is brick but do you know what? You just cannot stop mother nature. Nature is a force to be reckoned with - that is a for sure deal. Because when I went to put the package in the mailbox for the best postal worker in the world - Andy - to take, I noticed that greenery is starting to pop up between the bricks. I know that my neighbor will look at them as weeds, because that is basically what we call anything that grows where you do not want it to. But, I prefer to think of them as friends. They are a part of the garden and the grass that I lovingly tended to for the first 10 years that I lived here. I do not know who is going to be plucking those plucky little greens, but I can guarantee you that it is not going to be moi.

Anyhoot, all things in perspective! The same warm trends that are creating such lovely days for me are the same ones that caused havoc in the midwest of the U.S. My heart breaks for the families of those who lost loved ones and friends in the tornadoes. Hundreds of people are without homes. If all I have to worry about is a backyard filled with poison ivy and a few weeds in the front yard, well then I am pretty damn lucky. Jesus, my Lord and my love, thank you for the many blessings you have bestowed upon me and please watch over all those suffering not only in the midwest, but all over this vast globe of ours.

Peace,

Mare

Pictured above: The Front with those pesky, perky greens. P.S. our property line is that line you see at the top. My side? 6 inches; her side? Endless.
The backyard - lovely purple flowers on a vine indigenous to Staten Island and a little surprise popping up in my fairy planter. I do love those types of surprises!