Mars sextile Mars

How, how, how I should like to know does the universe conspire or the stars align or events transpire in such a way that two days before Mars sextiles Mars for me, I go to a neighboring couple's house to help celebrate their 40th (!) wedding anniversary and quite by chance (yeah, right) park myself down next to the husband of the woman I was supposed to play tennis with back in September last year but never did because a mutual friend asked me to pick him up at an auto renovation place early in the morning I was supposed to play and me being so selfless and all I completely forgot I had other plans? How does that happen?

Had I known he was her husband I would never have sat down next to him, as I've been bashing myself over the head ever since I didn't turn up for tennis having said I would. Capricorn on the Midheaven, me? It's been so much on my mind that when I asked if I could sit on the empty chair next to unknown man, was graciously granted permission, introduced myself and heard his introduction in return, it took great courage, me being an Aries and all, to immediately launch into an extended incoherent explanation of who I was and how I was the flake who had called nine months ago to see if she could play tennis with his wife and then never showed up, instead of babbling something about having forgotten to get coleslaw and hastily taken off for the buffet table, never to return.

The upshot of this was that on Monday morning, bright and early, 7:30 to 8:30 am to be exact, I was at the University courts making an absolute fool of myself, lunging at and missing ball after ball, but manifesting Mars sextile Mars to perfection. You want action? See Jane leap around and fly swat wildly. "Do you usually play singles?", I was asked by an ultra-polite player.

At 8:30, when a fifth player arrived, I excused myself selflessly, and having promised I would seek out and take tennis lessons before the next Monday, I was pushing my cart around Walmart in a frenzy at 10:53 am, when the Mars sextile Mars aspect perfected.

And when I really think about it, the beginnings of the Monday morning tennis playing go back way further than the Saturday night celebration. First, my neighbors needed to have gotten married in June, 1969. Then their daughter had to have moved to Silver City at some point so they could follow her out here. They had to have bought a house close enough to the house John and I bought so that when my beloved Fluff ran away to join the circus last spring and I posted flyers all over the neighborhood, Mr. 40th Anniversary Neighbor could call me to say he'd seen Fluff down at the creek between our houses - a day too late for me to find Fluff, but it was the first time we spoke.

And of course, once you start this train of thought, you can get back to what made me move to this country in 1963 so that so that so that in about 10 seconds. All way beyond me, but I have to go to Walmart tomorrow for more compost.

Venus sextile Saturn

Now this has been helped along by Mars square Pluto, which perfects tomorrow morning at 7:41 am, and I think gave me the energy to keep going through the afternoon and way into the evening digging up plants that weren't doing well, transplanting them somewhere where I thought they might be happier, enlarging the growing space I've made in an enclosed section of the "garden" by moving the logs that define the growing area, digging up buckets full of good soil from the oak grove and mixing it with compost to put into the enlarged planting area and in general doing so much manual labor that by eight pm I'm forced to come inside and know that for the following day, to all intents and purposes, I'll be out of service, Saturn in Virgo or not.

I get very Martha in the garden - as In Stewart and the space outside the house. I want everything to be exquisite, but exquisite in the sense that God did it and there's no other way it could be so perfect. Translated, that means I can spend hours trying to make a rock, a bit of wood and a dug up piece of ivy, say, look as though they've all been there for the past 10 years or so - moving the rock here, the bit of wood there, digging up the ivy again and again until I'm satisfied and the ivy is about to report me to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Flora.

If I didn't do everything with a four inch trowel and a bucket I would probably make progress faster, but my idea of the perfect birthday present to myself - one of those wheelbarrows on big wheels like the yuppie stroller thingies that you can push and jog behind at the same time - bit the dust when I realized the terrain here at the house is not suited, to put it mildly , for a wheel barrow of any type - it's all steps and ups and downs and terraced and extremely difficult to drag any kind of wheelbarrow anywhere, hence the trowel and the bucket.

And the point of this? (to be explored at greater length) - Venus in Taurus ( land, earth) sextile Saturn in Cancer (home, but it's difficult) manifested itself today as in the above. And if I can only wait long enough (Saturn) this 'ere "garden" is going to look really beautiful.

Venus conjunct Mercury

This perfected at 4 o'clock this afternoon and in yet another of my pitiful attempts at prediction, I'd decided it would be an email telling me the play I submitted to an evening of new works at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts in July had been accepted. After all, playwrights from New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada "were strongly encouraged to submit" and if Samuel French in New York had turned me down in May, maybe out here there wouldn't be 800 entries and I would have more of a chance. At the very least, I'd expect to get some kind of good news.

I did. The woman I work for emailed and told me she was depositing money into my account in New York, always a good thing. There's been tons of work lately so the ashes my tenants left in the fireplace are still there and I haven't unpacked yet, but I just might have made enough money to pay my MasterCard bill without having to go into my IRA again. Then John called, at about two, and said he'd like to come out here for July Fourth, something I'd wanted him to do but hadn't wanted to ask him in case he felt obligated. Very Venus and sweet.

The only Venusian element in the file I was transcribing - someone with a very guttural accent talking in extremely technical terms about what I think were volcanoes - is the money I'll get when I get paid for it, so when I heard the ping of a new email at ten past four I happily left Mr. Volcano and went to see if Scottsdale had any interest in my play. I still don't know if they do or not, but I did get an invitation from GMHC in New York inviting me to a "special evening with an outstanding chef" - Suvir Saran - (unknown to me but I live in Pumpkin Center now) "featuring an exquisite five-course dinner with wine pairings" at the cost of only one hundred and fifty dollars.

If that's not Venus I don't know what is, but this was Venus conjunct Mercury, so for your $150 you also get a demonstration by Chef Saran "of his distinctive cooking style" and you learn exactly how to prepare each of the exquisite five courses - in short, information. I don't believe in astrology. I experience it.