Just Write {94}

I was cutting the grass in rows, pushing the mower fast, sweating. I try to stay on task but I always end up going from the side of the house, leaving it unfinished and then to the front, leaving it unfinished, then to the other side….back and forth, making lines and cutting through and going straight and then turning and going another direction.

The grass here in Texas is so different from the grass in Minnesota. You don’t want to lie down in it because it’s not soft, it’s more like crunchy and there are vines in it. The blades grow from these vines that press down to the dirt in lines, criss-crossing, like I do when I mow.

Sometimes I’ll even go in a circle around a tree and then just keep going in circles for a few turns. Then I look around for straighter rows and go match up with them. Back and forth, I follow the rows. After mowing, there are always those little patches here and there that I missed. Go figure.

I look out over those spots and want to get the mower back out to make it perfect, but I don’t.

This task can be too much, in the heat here, but I love it. I love the Before and After simplicity of it. I love the work-out and most of all I love the head space. When I’m done, I got to the flower garden in front and pull weeds, and I could do that for hours. There’s something so calming about it, so serene and simple. Despite the drought, the weeds grow and need out, the dried petals need to be pulled off so new ones can grow. They still grow, with so little rain and regulated watering. They grow if the old things are gone.

I think I like it in that garden because it’s always in recovery, like me. It could never be free of all the dried up leaves or corners of leaves or petals waiting to be new. It could never be perfect, but it’s still there, still going. New flowers even appear. Sometimes I look closely at the new flowers out front and I can’t believe they keep showing up. Bright yellow, a soft purple, some orange. So I dig around at the base of the plants and I spray them with water and that’s how they stay. I love them.

I would do more, and for longer but there’s so little time. This time, I had to get in to put the kids to bed and Elsie was waiting for me in her shorts-and-t-shirt pajamas and her arms up while she toddler-ran toward me. We rocked a while and I sang her a song and all was right in just that one small moment. There’s been a lot of adjusting, obviously, with this move. A lot of emotion and change, shifting and making a new life in a new space in a new place. But right then, with Elsie Jane and her fresh-from-the-bath smelling hair.

The garden can’t help it that the rain won’t come and stay, or that butterflies always still show up.

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This is the 94th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page, and please don’t link to posts that are not freely written in the spirit of capturing moments–you know, don’t link to how-to posts, lists or sponsored posts. Also, please link back to this post in yours so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.

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