The Summer Solstice and Leaving Behind Feeling Behind
I am where I am...
Today is the Summer Solstice, and to celebrate I found myself a new garden hat because either my head is growing or my old one shrunk. Either way, it was giving me a headache, so I wasn’t wearing it, and now I have a sunburn on the top of my head where my hair parts, and I’d rather not repeat that.
I have a big garden. The tomatoes are popping out flowers, the strawberries are out of control, and the foxglove is taller than me. I’ve always dreamed of a Tasha Tudor style potager paradise. It’s the garden of my dreams. Except that my dreams forget how much work it is to have a garden this big, and I am always behind.
The feeling that I am “behind” is very familiar to me. It goes way beyond the garden, to well, everything. I don’t ever remember feeling all caught up with anything. I’ve got this relentless inner pressure to catch up. It’s deep. It exhausts me. I am forever trying to squeeze things out by the deadline, real or self-imposed. I am talking myself off the edge of the guilt over the “thing” - whatever the “thing” is, because it is always taking longer than it should, being harder to start than it should, or getting done, but not on time. My brain has recorded the voice of nearly every teacher I had- “Jessica’s work is so good- if she would only apply herself…”
I grow some food in my garden: squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, green onions, and a solid boatload of strawberries (I am officially adopting the title Strawberry Witch), but mostly I grow flowers. I have been working on my flower beds for years, trying to grow everything from seed, and every year they delight me, and also make feel that sting of what could be if I could just catch up. Once summer gigs really get going, the garden is kind of on it’s own. Every year it feels like I make a plan for how I will move the perennials, get the seeds started early, and fill all the holes, and then find myself in a scramble through June to get the bare minimum in place before summer is officially here, which of course, I never fully do.
As I am writing this on the Summer Solstice, summer is officially here. The echinacea is rising, the lupine and poppies are already going to seed, and tiny seedlings are still just emerging because I planted the seeds two weeks ago instead of when the snow melted in April. It’s buzzing with bees and butterflies. I got some new things in. There will be sunflowers. There will be cosmos. They might bloom in September, but they’ll get there. There are new perennials too- and they won’t bloom this year, but they will put down some strong roots, and I bet I get the hollyhocks next year.
The garden is pretty unconcerned with my backlog of wishes. It’s just growing at the pace it grows. Unfurling with what it is.
I don’t want to miss what I have because I am too worried about what I couldn’t get done. I want to be present for this season of blooming and expansion. In the garden. In myself. I want the stretch. I do not want a mosquito of shame buzzing in my ear all summer. The garden will be what it will be. I will be what I will be. I want to stop trying to pull myself up to the beat and just slow the metronome down to a place where I can drop into the pocket.
It’s what I want, but I fear it too. Can I still pay all my bills without guilt biting at my heels? Will it all fall down around me if I don’t push? Can I do enough if I go at a pace that is as slow as I’m wishing for? What if I don’t bloom this year? Can I afford to just grow my roots? That sounds kind of like something a rich woman gets to do, not a working artist with a mortgage.
Then again, there is an extravagant bouquet of peonies on my table because the wind knocked them over before I got around to staking them up, and I’ve picked at least a quart of strawberries off the plants growing in the paths that I never got around to pulling, so maybe I’m a rich woman after all.
CHECK IT OUT…
I am writing some songs with preschool children this week, and when I asked them what a song was we came up with this answer- “A song is something you sing that makes you feel something.” I think they nailed it.
They were also very excited when they found out I had once written a song about a mermaid…
Jes, your garden sounds beautiful. I bet every year it surprises you with its own solutions. I was weeding a hard dirt path and recognized the newest sprouts as chamomile--not weeds. The ground is so packed and hard that they are tiny chamomile bushes with a few flowers each. I left them and it amuses me every time I walk there--garden design by the birds.
Gosh, Jes, can I ever relate to this post! Thank you for your wise words. I'm going to take a note from you.