Sunday, April 10, 2011

Ordinary

Pruned my roses at the house today in the wind and rain, neighbors stopping by to chat, my son cooking up a big vat of chili, a Mariner's game on the TV. How spectacularly ordinary that all was.

I admit to a general neglect of my garden, having lived elsewhere these past years. Actually, it's a full-on neglect with English ivy run amok, thorny sprouts from the neighbor's locust tree popping up in too many places, blackberry vines clearly in control of it all.

My neighbor had just listed a nice queen sized bed on Craig's List -- hot deal -- and I snatched it up immediately. Here's a glimpse of its journey:

I'd wanted to get a shot of them walking down the middle of the street but by the time I noticed them, dropped the clippers, shed the gloves, fished the iPhone from my pocket (two, three seconds) they were already stepping up to the parking strip. The sky was ready to let loose, but we tucked the mattress into an open slot in the basement just in time. A spot of drama.

But there's a rosebush I've been loyally pruning every March for twenty-four years -- a bush with the most perfect coral blossoms -- keeping it in check even during the neglectful years. And this year I'm late with it all, and for the first time I discovered that it's actually a climbing rose who has never had to opportunity to climb. It isn't what I've thought it was, all this time. (Oh, those metaphors keep popping their little reminders into my consciousness, don't they?) But these immediate times being what they are, it got lopped yet again. Planning on a transplant next March.

Watched a silly Queen Latifah movie with C., piled on her sofa with the dog and assorted cats and a bottle of wine. Happy ending, etc., no terminal disease after all, she gets the man/the man gets her. She kept saying that she couldn't figure out if the setting was the French Alps or the Czech Republic, and I said, "Connie, the set(ting) is Hollywood." (And no, I didn't vocalize the parentheses, but that was my emphasis when I spoke.)

Perhaps this can all be just a movie?
I'm ready for the closing credits.
The End.

Alas.

10 comments:

  1. There is nothing like some drama in your life to make you appreciate the "ordinary day". Good for you picking up such a good deal..it must have been great fun watching that bed walk down the street.

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  2. I love your story of the coral rose--and I think the 'garden of neglect' belongs to "every writer" (most especially when it's deadline time.) And gardens, as one wise friend said to me, are patient.

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  3. Just wanted to say I'm glad you're keeping in touch with us all this way - keeping up your end of the psychic, metaphorical, virtual string. Good to have news.

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  4. This may sound very sanctimonious T., but a lesson I have had to learn just lately is to trust that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. That what is happening is exactly what is supposed to happen.

    It is neither good nor bad, it just is.

    And that if I accept I will learn, and when I learn, I will grow.

    It's in resisting the inevitable we feel the pain.

    Pretend your way through your ordinary moments.

    Fake it til you make it.

    Still holding your fragile heart in our hands.

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  5. Life is a movie and we are only witnessing everything around us.....trick is not to lose ourselves in our own personal movies.
    Ima (now known as NONE for some unseen Google reason)

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  6. my son built me a wonderful trellis...i *need* a climbing coral rose! save me a cutting, please. (we'll be in seattle late summer...i'll bring you a rugosa from maine...)

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  7. Just dropping in with love and hugs, dear T. xo

    I like what Helen says about the patience of gardens - when the time is right, your coral climbing rose will climb. There'll be no holding it back.

    Take best over there; you are ever in our thoughts. xo

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  8. As a unrepentant seeker of signs and reasons, parallels and blessings, I find meaning in a climbing rose which had not been identified as one before this. In my mind it speaks of being recognized for its true nature, given a chance bloom in a new way. Unsolicited opinion but laden with the best thoughts. xo

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  9. ...a climbing rose who (!) has never had the opportunity to climb...
    that caught me, too. what color, coral?
    keep climbing and helping others to do the same, and thanks for sharing these remarkable reflections and observations, esp. in days like these, love, eva

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