The Ache
growth doesn't come without a pain of some kind an ache that cannot be ignored in the process.
A little note to begin: I have been a little quieter with my weekly newsletter. Summer and this season are busy for me with work. I both find plenty of writing inspiration but little room to do the work as a mom and business owner. Your support for this space and patience don’t go unnoticed. I will be releasing the Summer guide to paid members next week with the solstice.
One evening as the sun began to dip towards the Ash tree grove that I have become so familiar with over the years living here, my son entered my room as I was picking up from the day and he was prepping for bedtime. He sat on the bed and rubbed his legs. I said, “What’s up buddy?” and he said “My legs are achy. Growing up hurts sometimes doesn’t it?” I replied, “Yes it really can.” Then he shrugged it off and headed to his room to check on his leopard gecko, Fluffy, as an 8-year-old boy does as if what he just said wasn’t profound to me at all.
The chapters of life lately have been shifting around here. In all the ways my garden has expanded in the warmth of this hotter-than-normal spring, I feel the rush of the changes and growth all around me. In many ways, I have struggled to write about it. Feeling it was hard to see it all clearly. Maybe this is why I have struggled to find myself back in newsletter mode since leaving for England. Maybe the growth that I have been experiencing has been hard to express this spring in words because it has felt so thick and I have been too close to it. It felt that the roots of it were too new to dig at it just yet. I needed it to find it’s way a little more.
Watching as the kids are growing up rapidly has left me aware not just of their changing world, but also of what it means for me too. The way my days have more breathing room than that I have in nearly a decade. The way I can hear myself more than ever before and also all the things that need undoing from the anxiety of early parenting. Maybe some of these feelings arise because it makes me realize that as they grow I feel the fast approach of my 40’s on the horizon. Maybe it is the onset of what 40 means as a woman. The ending of my childbearing years means a shift in my body, mind, and soul in the way becoming a mother was the same. I have an urgency to feel this moment in time. To feel the gratitude of who I am as a woman right now. A woman who I feel like I am only getting to know. A woman who I finally feel is emerging from all the things she thought she should be into who she wants and has always desired to be knowingly and unknowingly.
At the same time as I watch my children grow literal inches in a school year, I see myself both becoming myself and feeling the rush of how quickly the years have blown right by. This leaves me asking, am I living this time in my life the way I desire to?
I feel the aches of growing as I watch myself and my children. The beauty of reaching new heights, seeing new views of ourselves, but feeling the tugging that what once felt so permanent and ready to be taken for granted somehow has slipped away. Just as a new wrinkle forms on my forehead or another gray hair appears along with a stronger sense of self does the same. One thing leaving so another can enter life; the give and take of growing older.
I feel this ache of growth every end of spring. The rising to the light is such a gift even in the struggles it brings. As the lavender blooms and my children rush their hands over it when they once crawled to reach it or they sat in my laps to catch the blooms as their eyes learned to see the beauty of this life we have in our tiny little spot on this earth, I feel the presence of what the shift from spring to summer always means. I feel the ache of it all like my son feels as his legs spring him higher into being less of a child and more of a teenager. We both not fully aware of how far we have come till we look back at what once was to what is now.
I feel the ache as the school year ends and I come to terms with the closing of chapters. The last days in a school community we love to start fresh in another because of reasons we contemplated for months with heavy hearts. Trusting the closing of one chapter for the opening of another.
When solstice rolls over us next week, I feel the immediate feeling that in all the rising that spring brings, summer brings the shift back towards the endings again. The recognition of the change in which we begin. The ever-present reality that time marches on over and up through the circle. I feel that ache already in my bones as the sun shifts back to the south and I will watch the green fields turn brown and the blueberries will be harvested and the apples close behind. I feel it all in me these days just as my son does. The ache in the bones but in my case my soul, that life isn’t ever worth wishing away. The ache is a reminder of the gift of now as much as it is also the signal that where we are will never be there in the same way again.
That night my son came to me about his achy legs, I followed him to his room not long after he headed down to check on his lizard. The moment i was close enough he shifted gears and rambled on about the lizard shedding its skin and what she likes to eat. While he was distracted and inspecting his lizard I wrapped my arms around him and pulled his strong growing body against mine. It was hard not to remember that just 8 years ago his whole little body could fit in just one of the hands that now wrap around his chest. I listen to all the things he describes knowing that there was a time I longed for him at 3 to speak just a few words and the day I watched it happen, and I cried in the therapist’s office. I thought of all the aching I have done in his growth too. The aching of the things we both had and never will have again. The growth of self and soul because of these aches we have that present in all sorts of ways.
It’s then my sadness always begins to shift to gratitude. All the ways growth reminds us of how we are living. The way it has reminded me to be here in the shifting of all of life making sure I am firmly present, calm, and human in it all. Knowing that growth is a sign of life despite the pull it has on our hearts. It is the reminder of the precious things that mean we still have more time to go. I hold that as the anecdote to the way my soul feels like my son’s growing legs, as I tuck him into bed on his last night of school as a 2nd grader, knowing these days are as fleeting as the asparagus was that now blossoms in the summer heat. All precious despite the way it hurts to grow, change, close chapters, and remember there isn’t getting any of this life back but only to live in it and feel all the ways it tugs on us to expand a little more all while we also release what once was also good. The ebbing and flowing of all the layers of living a life.
Planting Now in Zone 6
Here is my list for the final week of May and the first few days of June…aka GO time in zone 6.
Outside:
Every summer veggie (aka it’s GO time). Tomatoes, Basil, peppers, eggplant
Watermelons in the next week or so whether direct seed or starts
Succession Cucumbers and beans direct sow
Direct Sow sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos one more week
Beans of all kinds
Succession summer lettuce plantings
All summer and tender annual things are ready - Get them in quickly
Inside:
Squashes - zucchini and winter squash can be started inside right now as both later plantings (I wait because of vine borers) and for successions (squash beetles)
Beans for succession plantings
Greens for succession plantings
Broccoli for succession
Fall squash can be started
Holding off:
cool weather things like spinach, arugula, cilantro, etc.
Potatoes
Carrots, beets,turnips and other brassicas other than you can sow indoors cauliflower and succession broccoli
Hold off on fruit trees and shrubs now till fall
Any trees and shrubs should be held off until September at the earliest
Beans for drying - we are passed the window
On my mind this week
Been one hella busy week around here, but life is full and good in the best ways:
Why Women Grow: I have been reading this book for the past few weeks in the evenings. It’s been so lovely and I couldn’t recommend it enough. I have been exploring womanhood in a way I have never before and it has been a wonderful companion in this chapter.
Being Relaxed: What does it mean to be a relaxed woman? Like truly? I am asking this a lot right now. I think it is multi-layered for sure, but I saw a quote about this a few weeks back and I cannot stop thinking about it now.
Tuscany: With a new chapter of kids at a different school this year, our goal has been to bring in new experiences. One of them is traveling more. We are going to Rome and Tuscany in October so I am researching farm stay experiences. I have always wanted to go to do this, so I am excited about 10 days in the Tuscan countryside learning about wine making and olive oil production.
Log retaining walls: They make great ecosystem builders, the materials are readily available, and they look really darn cool.
Building a Natural Playground for my kids: Like I have the free time for this, but I sort of think it would be a fun project with the kids this summer and fall. I loved this little spot I saw on Instagram this week.
Ula Maria’s Chelsea Flower Show Winning Garden: This year if you followed the Chelsea Flower show you know that the number of recycled and wild-scaped projects was the main focus, which was great to see. This take on forest bathing for the Muscular Dysterify Garden was amazing by Ula Maria. The recycled materials for the walls has me incredibly inspired right now.
Rosie Kellett: I love her newsletter,
and recipes, but Rosie lives in a shared flat in London with roommates and they each share the making of dinner and I love the concept. I think communal living like this needs to be more normal in our changing housing challenges. So I love seeing how she cooks for her flatmates.Milkweed: The odd saving grace against all rodent-like pests this year has been the milkweed. I always leave it in my garden but it has been a massive deterrent for eating the goodies in our garden this year. So cheers to the milkweed!
What are some things that have been swirling in your brain this week?
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Thanks so much for the mention Megan! I loved reading this newsletter, particularly hearing about your planting, it's one of my biggest dreams / life goals to have a vegetable patch of my own x