Summertime

Oh! How I love the summer! All my life the fall had been my favorite season, probably because I hate to wear shorts. Or because of the pretty leaves and all that. But suddenly when I have a house and a yard (which has a million trees, which each have a billion leaves, which FALL DOWN in the FALL)...suddenly I love the summer.

When we first moved here I decided I would begin a new hobby as a gardener. And sometimes this goes pretty well. But as most of the people who I know can attest to, even though I cringe to admit it, I am a little ADHD. This brings on uncontrollable bouts of buying flats of flowers, only to find them sitting around in 3 weeks, dead, unwatered, my husband tsk tsk-ing me. Ah, gardening.

I have begun plants from seeds, too, but in effort to overcompensate for my ADHDishness, I planted them this year...all in mid-April. Then we had two major frosts and I looked over my lush, blue, icy garden with a sadness in my heart. I keep wanting to overcome my own nature just to have some pretty nice flowers and veggies.

Add to all this the fact that I don't want to use pesticides and would like to provide Helena Rose with some non-toxic veggies for her, and you also get stem rot, potato bugs, aphids, etc. I'm still reading about all the "natural" cures for all of this. And it's doubly difficult living with a carpenter/construction worker, whose first response has been, on occasion, "Just kill it all by spraying diesel fuel on it and start again."

So I try, every day, a little here and there just to see if I can get something going. And it's like my life, too. Helena turned 2 this weekend (2!!!) and although there are many things I'd like us to do, rushing here and there, daily, sometimes she just doesn't want me to help. She's 2 now, so her favorite things to say are "no," "mine," and "NO." Oh, also "MINE!" Today we rode the T (Trolley, the light-rail above-ground subway system) into town, and she didn't want my help at all. She didn't want me to help her on the steps, she didn't want me to hold her on the train, and there she sat, along, in her own seat, like a little subway passenger in New York, blooming right on her own. Without any help!

Ah, my own little garden at work. Thank god she doesn't need to be planted.