Pruning

Winter finally eased its grip on Western NY, its relentless chill now a memory.  I can’t seem to spend enough time outside.  I am not idle, doing as much to wake the garden as the warm sun overhead.

When I moved to this house, I traded my prized perennial garden, the culmination of twelve years of sweat, doubt and, ultimately, triumph, for a year round ornamental garden, with twenty some odd shrubs.  The previous owners did not share my gardening passion as surmised from the three layer weed blanket over ALL beds, the aforementioned shrubs and reliance on mulch and stone.

Behind my seat next to Mary in our van when we left IL were four smuggled plants I couldn’t bear to part with: my favorite orange rose, a hydrangea bush whose blooms start out white and deepen to a coral pink, and a few delphiniums (it was late August so the second blooms had long since withered and dropped off, leaving me to hope I had white and pink in addition to the more common vibrant blue.) They hibernated in my mother-in-law’s garden until I replanted them in the narrow bed behind the pool.

Every time I go to stick a shovel in the ground at our current garden, that weed blanket and thick shrub roots block my unwelcome intrusion. I wrestle, curse and go get my sharpest shears, meanly cutting those obstructions until I finally dig a hole barely big enough for my recent acquisitions. I recall how easy it was to dig in my old garden, the loose black dirt always giving. I want to give the garden a good talking to, saying things like I am the boss, not you and once you see what I have in store for you, you’ll love it, I promise.  But, no matter how much I wheedle, silence and stubbornness matching my own emanate from the proud evergreens.

Another exasperating aspect of shrubbery is pruning.  This is what I have been doing all week, busying my routine to the point of unbalance.  I know that the gardening hating prudent previous owners paid a crew of men (I’m not being sexist.  There could have been women involved, but from what I’ve observed of my neighbors who employ similar companies, it’s usually an all men operation) to cut, edge and mulch once a year.  I, however, refuse to pay someone to do what I love.  I try to enjoy every minute, following each dead branch to its origin and cutting cleanly to promote future growth, but by the fifth tenth bush, it feels like I will never finish.  I have piles of branches and scratched and sore hands/arms to feel accomplished, but, man, can those enjoyable moments speed up so I can be done already?

This draft has been sitting unpublished for a week.  Pruning in the front is done along with edging and general clean up.  This morning, while waiting for the school bus, Mary and I watched the garbage men struggle to heft at least twenty black garbage bags from my curb to their truck.  More branches too big to fit in bags await the town clean up crew. Perhaps that will be tomorrow morning’s entertainment.

Spring thunder storms prevented me from finishing the job by covering the beds with black mulch.  The week’s forecast is rain and colder temperatures so my outside forays may end for a bit…leaving me no excuse not to publish blog drafts and return to my book.

Do you ever analyze your motives, wondering how it is that something that was not even a thought a few weeks back now is the sole focus of your attention?  I think about this all of the time, second guessing myself, and assuming this redirection is simple distraction from the true reason for my stall on supposedly important projects: fear.

For a while now, I have been unable to make progress on my book.  I am at a point that I knew would be difficult to write about: the year following my sons’ birth.  I still judge myself for not handling this time better.  Instead of pushing through the exhaustion and fear, I feel I gave up.  I sought temporary relief by switching to formula and avoiding interaction with my sons, but never surrendered the standard that I needed to master motherhood or the guilt that I failed my sons.  Just after their first birthday, my depression escalated to sleeplessness, which forced me to give up the charade and seek help.

Treatment helped me to understand my difficulties stemmed from not having good parental role models, consciously at least, but, in my gut, the flagellation continued.

I kept repeating the same mantra in therapy: I don’t know how to play with my sons.  It sounded whiny then, and it still sounds whiny, which is why it is difficult to write about.  Just relax and do it, my therapist said, and I agreed, and still agree, and suspect readers would agree.  Who wants to read a book about a problem that is so easily fixed?  How maddening is it that the main character can’t fix it?  Therein lies the rub.  My illness and fear hinder me from enacting this simple solution, no matter how much suffering is endured from inaction.  It’s what drove me crazy during my breakdowns: the realization that it was within my power to relax, sleep and accept, instead of fight, my circumstances.  But, all that knowledge did was increase anxiety and move those desires further from my grasp.

Writing about this time, which really has never stopped, because I never conquered fear and became convinced I am a good mother, forces me to reveal that my story has no satisfactory resolution.  I just endured, and began to accept my limitations.  My story has honesty, but when pruned down, not bravery or inspiration.