Garden Reel

Right at this moment, I have a desire of my heart as I sit in the garden, cool morning breezes wafting, geese signaling, while I type and post. The air and view out here exceeds that of the indoor wall. Of course, other sounds punctuate the air—a car alarm, the muted flow of traffic and a jet soaring overhead; where is it bound? But these have their place just as the unseen noisy crow to my right has his. Changes are in the air too—a bit of upheaval though thankfully temporary. The apartment management has decided that since they are raising the rates exorbitantly they can say, “But look, we’re cleaning and painting the buildings.” Outside that is, and brown. Thankfully, it looks better when it’s dry since when it’s wet it’s dark brown with a hint of green…er…very organic looking. So, I have to bring indoors every last plant, pot, bag of potting soil and the garden furniture. That will be tight but thankfully temporary. According to a famous rabbi story one of my Jewish friends tells—we will be amazed at how much space we have indoors when we move everything back out to the garden again!

I’ve potted a couple plants into “real” pots that were still in their greenhouse plastic pots. They’ll grow better, stand taller and be less likely to tip over—and there will be fewer empty pots to corral. One long Italian-made pot that I’ve carried with me for over twenty-five years has split horizontally. It worked fairly well as long as it stayed in place but I didn’t want to risk trailing soil across the carpet so I pulled a not so decorative Italian pot (ribs rather than leaves) from the wings and replaced it. I guess some autumnal fixing up is good though I wish they cared as much about the inside. But then, that would be major upheaval and I have enough of that for now.