The Tension of Spring
Just a few days in and I am finding spring already has lessons to give
I sometimes come here on Fridays without a clear structure for my writing. I wait all week, hoping it will find me like a lightning bolt. It is easy to shy away from that disjointed feeling and say that I will just not try today because it doesn’t feel clear or worthy of sitting down to write anything. I can usually muster some coherent sentences, but I rarely find the connection between them.
This year when I committed to my writing practice, I committed to facing those days more and more. To sit down and string something together out of that blank space between one thought and another or in today’s case, 10 plus different things. I can easily find an excuse not to sit down and write about things, especially in the wake of the current world of politics, social media, the challenges of parenting, my complicated relationship with being a modern human and so highly sensitive to the natural world, work that I love but still is work, needing space to just be, feeling the impending days of aging,…. the list is pretty endless. Yet all these things can tug and pull making it hard to hear the thoughtful things that I know I have somewhere in there. Till I sit here and all of a sudden, I realize those are the things.
So here I am this week committed to showing up in a space to write when I feel this exact disjointed feeling. I had some thoughts to write about gardening, but the snow made it feel further down in the trail of things I felt were good to discuss. I thought then about parenting because I was in the depths of a snow day and starting spring break at home with the kiddos and my partner heading out on a work trip. I could find a lot of discontent in the midst of it, but I also felt a wonderful warmth of safety, contentment, fulfillment, and happiness in having nothing much planned. Then in the midst of it, I am finding my work to be a wonderful act of resistance to what I feel politically as an American right now. To plant a tree. To improve the soil. To support small businesses. To dig into my community. These are ways I am finding a beautiful and life-giving sense of fight in it all.
We must know and accept that things will break our hearts, and that things will be messy, but they will also become beautiful again as well.
I find there are all these spinning plates at times going on and I know I am not alone. I am not someone who finds joy in pretending everything is good when there are things that ache in me for slowing time with my kids, to slow time in myself as well because I am deeply enjoying my age as much as I am my kids’ ages. There are the things I wish I had more time for that may be silly but making books of the kids over the years patching up clothes on my sewing machine or slowly solving a need in our home through making or thrifting instead of a Google search and a buy it now button. Like I said silly things.
There are also angsty feelings that surface. Things that make me want to fight and get loud like how kids like my son are handled in the “special education system” and even how I feel about those words or when he comes home saying he has a disability and how it cringes on my skin to hear this beautiful creative human feel incapable because of words used.
Then some things fill me up like having a deeply caring multi-generational community we live within. The gift of villaging with others is deeply life-giving. The random days on the porch for a glass of wine or feeding the neighbor kids some bread I made that day and knowing my kids will go over to the neighbors and have the same experiences. The tension of the beautiful and heartbreaking and angering are pulling and pushing. One tender thing surfacing that brings tears of joy and sadness all at once isn’t uncommon the older I become.
In some way, I find this is where spring is a gift. No wonder I feel these things. Here is a season of pushing and tugging. A season of transition that surfaces and reveals the past and present in tension and meshed together so closely we cannot see them separately. Do I believe we are heading somewhere good? In my heart yes (are we talking about humanity or the seasons is the question). The light tells me so, but at times when you awake and the snow still lingers when you have already seen a crocus it can be the same tension of the beautiful and frustrating that also are part of life at the ripe age of 38. Holding it all messily and then asking just how can I also beg for a more just and fair world for all living things is the challenge of being a human and it is also the very thing spring shows us how to embrace and strive for.
I know this is rambly and once again somewhat disjointed, but I would rather write something honest than never show up at all. Sometimes I find the things lacking structure are the things we find the most cathartic and necessary.
Spring is messy. Being human is even messier if we are doing it well. If we are facing the painful things or the things that feel dug too deep that we fear pulling them out and looking at them square till we understand them or decide we may not be able to. That is very messy because sometimes the answers and truths are scarier than the thing itself. I have found myself the last few years doing this and I am glad I have, but it never makes it easier to do.
Spring isn’t far off of that. I know the mud will come in. I know the yard will be bland. I know all these things. I know this year I will have to rethink major parts of our garden in heartbreaking ways (discussing this below). I know there will be a mix of seasons in the mudroom of our home. I know all the mud that will come in on the kids’ clothes every day and the paws of the dog. I know it all, but it doesn’t make it so it doesn’t grind at times. I always ask what if I just leaned in more? What if I not only knew it was messy but accepted it? Would it make it easier? The answer isn’t clear till I try, but I find spring can be a time of both the renewal of life as if we can breathe in new ways, but it also can be a time of tension. A time to feel all the things at once.
So here I am sitting down writing about the tension of the beautiful, heartbreaking, life-giving, content, nostalgic, joyful, aches, and exhaustion that come even in the bright sun of spring. In the same way, I search for the sunny, warm spots in the house and yard this time of year and avoid the shade, I find it easy to do the same in life. Yet I want to know I am just as capable and resilient enough after a winter that I can not only find myself comfortable in the shade but able to do the work needed as well.
If spring is already speaking something to me, it is that we must accept and lean into the uncomfortable parts of growth. We must know and accept that things will break our hearts, and that things will be messy, but they will also become beautiful again as well. If none of these things happen, then we aren’t growing, emerging, changing, and evolving. Spring reminds me that this is not just real, but necessary. A lesson I plan to continue to observe this season as well as practice.
There are still about 10 or so tickets left for this event, even in April. I love talking about gardens and helping gardeners of all skill levels and styles gain awareness about how to build such a beautiful and intentional space for themselves while working with nature.
If you want more information, you can check it out here.
On my mind this week
Just some things happening and that I am thinking of lately:
Our Garden:
I think if there has been something outside of work on my mind this week it has been our lower garden. We discovered toward the end of the year last year when we noted needing to update some things in our septic system that our garden got placed over the septic field. I blame 2020 and my newborn baby brain for not thinking through this or realizing it till this point. This means all the work and love here will be shifted. I have been mourning it and also sort of feeling relieved in some odd way as well. The space honestly felt like too much work with my own business and kids and the rest of my life and I have been feeling the need to shift some things. The other thing is our chicken coop may be taken out as well. It will be a season of reducing things rather than adding. It won’t be easy work and I find it pretty full circle to think about. This thing we built to sustain us in 2020 now is being dismantled. What a fascinating shift in reality. You know I get heady about these things. That said, we still have our raised beds and so much more and I am honestly excited to pursue this space again as our sole gardening space outside of other land-stewarding work. I am excited to revamp it a bit and give it my attention in a way I haven’t been able to. You may ask what am I thinking now, well, funny you ask because I think for now it will be seeded into wildflowers and native plants. Maybe we will mow a patch early in the season and place a table there but I also am okay if we just leave it as a beautiful little knoll of flowers for wildlife. Maybe nature has come a little closer than it has. All this time we have kept them out and maybe it never was our’s to control but nature to enjoy. It’s been shifting my brain a lot lately, to say the least.Stay-cations:
It’s spring break this week for our kids and it's the first time since 2020 we haven’t gone somewhere. It feels funny and calming at the same time. I sort of am enjoying just staying put. Now we have traveled a lot in the last year so maybe thus the contentment. We have been to England, Italy, Florida, Colorado, Chicago, and New York in the last year and it is sort of amazing to me to think about that. In just 2 months I myself head to England.Contentment:
This word feels weighty at times when I think about it. I think our culture doesn’t like it at all because it means we buy less, we travel less, we use our money less. Contentment may be the antithesis of our consumerist culture. The thing is the more I sink into that word as a success rather than a failure or a sign of doing less or achieving less. The more calm and at peace I feel with life. I remind myself often, I have everything I need right now and my life right now is great just like it is. They are becoming a mantra and as someone who is a people pleaser, empath, and can tend to overwork it is bringing me space to have clearer boundaries with everything in my life little by little. I think this is why gratitude is so effective as it reminds us that we have plenty already.Still, the only thing I like on social media:
Everyone has the thing they love to see on social media. For me, it is skiing. It could be dead of summer or I could have just come off the slopes, but I am completely obsessed with watching people make turns in fresh groomed snow. It is my favorite thing. That’s my guilty pleasure and I am okay with it.
The spring guide is here! It is for our paid subscribers so if you aren’t one yet, you can get a discount below to join and get access to a new guide every season. I have big updates coming to the summer one so sign up now.