It’s been an endless week, one day bleeding into the next. A blur of gathering with people, sitting immobile in my big chair in pain, doom-scrolling on the sly (from my better selves), and then (finally) I got out into the garden. I’m trying to get out there more often. I’m always saying that, and the struggle is real. When I go out there I rarely want to come back in. I’m always pushing myself in ways my body tells me is stupid and mean to my future self. It’s an ongoing argument that both sides of me win. I’m in more pain today. Have spent half of it on ice. My back hurts the most, but my knee too, has been exacerbated.

But it felt SO GOOD. Everything gets quieter in this messy loud head of mine when I’m in the garden. I love how it feels to use my muscles to dig plants in – and dig other plants out. I love how it feels to pull out the sour-grass in large heavy clumps that I dump in the compost like a visual sigh of relief. I love the smell of the soil. I love removing dead growth from perennials and trees, shaping them up for the best possible spring growth season.

Even when I look around and see the chaos of what I haven’t done and may never get to, I’m still okay. Acres of sour-grass I’ll never conquer, the blood peach I have never yet truly pruned because it’s still a bit spindly… I know the way to help it get more lush is to prune it. It’s okay. It’s really okay out there with the plants. The Pink Pearl apple has developed burr knots and what looks like fire-blight. I might be able to save it by cutting all that off. Or I might be more comfortable taking it out altogether. It’s okay.

We all have to go sometime. I’m okay making these choices in my garden. I’ve had to make similar choices with my beloved animals too. Sometimes your heart breaks a little, or a lot, but I’m okay making the choices. I trust that I’m always working towards the best outcome possible for my whole ecosystem.

Gonna need to work on balancing what my body can handle (and what’s healthy for it) with what my mind needs (and what’s healthy for it). Hardest thing in the world to do when you’ve spent a lot of time in survival mode. So much longer than most (maybe any) people know. So I pushed myself yesterday because it was so good for my heart and my head.

I started pruning the Sevillano olive. We moved it so many times to find where it could thrive that I haven’t ever pruned it since we bought it. The Manzanilla is next. It’s probably some function of human hubris that makes me think I can hear the plants, but I do. I do think I can hear them, and it’s an unwritten and non-vocal language I speak.

I love the winter garden here in California. That I get to go out in it is such a deep blessing. The dead growth, though not as dramatic as places with deep long freezes, is still somehow breathtaking. Expired plants, having reached the end of their season, surrender to the long process of decay. At the same time, seedlings from some plants have already emerged.

Graveyards and creches nearly touching at all times. The circle of life and death in the garden is close and unguarded. Out in the garden it feels exactly as it should be. Seedlings bursting up and out into life next to the corpses of the plants that created them.

Out in the garden, I feel exactly as I should be.