Mr. Log helper came this morning and started to assemble the logs scattered around while I got out the hacksaw and went into the oak grove where I've been cutting lengths of rebar and cut some more so he could get going with the log retaining wall. When I'd done three I took them over to him and then went up the stone side steps to get to the house to change to short sleeves.
The flower beds I made by the side of the steps have been there about four years now, but this is the first year my *gardening* attempts are paying off, and I was stopped in my tracks (sorry) by - all of a sudden - how beautiful they looked. The dusty miller and vinca have been there all along, doing well because they're in some shade and don't have the relentless Land of Enchantment sun beating down on them all day, but today I saw cornflowers, larkspur, marigolds, daisies and a few unidentified wildflowers - blue, dark purple, yellow-orange, white, pink - all mixed up together in between the grey-green foliage and looking as though they had grown there naturally with no help from any human hand - just what I've been working towards for the past eight years.
The only word I can come up with is "transfixed", which is why I'm better at writing dialogue than prose, but I was; a few seconds of wonder and awe at nature's beauty and all that, and then I went and changed my shirt, cut some more rebar and took off in the car to the neighboring house where I can have all the lava rock I can pick up, returning with a big tub full to Mr. Log, who started to tell me could build me a beautiful small stone wall for not much money. Umm, lovely, not this year though, I said, can only do so much each time I'm out here. But maybe we can run a tab, he said, I'll do the work and you can pay me bit by bit. Umm, I said, let me think about it, and off he went, log wall built, while I immediately started weeding what will one day be a wildflower meadow but at the moment is so unlike one it's too daunting to even describe what it is.
Two phone calls interrupted me, both of them degenerating quickly into mutually held highly pessimistic views of the future. I'd intended to put down more weed-cloth and spread lava rock over it, but it got cold earlier than usual and I ended up knocking off at six and picking the last of the green tomatoes so I can pull the plants up tomorrow. How's that for a totally uninspired saturnine ending?
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