Gardening

[wyld_dandelyon]

It was cool today, so I put on a hoodie and gloves and pruned the dead bits out of some of our roses. Since it didn't rain this morning, the yard smelled so wonderful. And then I was tired and unfocused. I sure wish this long covid would get gone. Yes, I'm doing a lot better than last year, but I can't do anywhere near as much as I could the year before, even now. It's frustrating.

But the roses are beautiful, and I'm still here to see them, and that is a thing that makes me happy.

Oh, and we got several pride flags up on the second floor porch. It's nice to wake up to see them waving in the wind, while it blows the scent of the roses in my window.

And I have some baby pea pods. I should go out and pick some tomorrow. Will they even make it inside? I guess I'll find out.

I wonder if any of the mulberries will be ripe yet?

Comments

[msstacy13]

Mmmm... mulberries...

[wyld_dandelyon]

There's a lot of pale pink ones, but no ripe ones yet.

[msstacy13]

Hmmm... "pale pink mulberries" has potential as a song cue.

Meanwhile, at the risk of droning senselessly, the bus I rode yesterday went past (a block away) the house my family moved into when I was nine years old. A six-unit apartment building was just completing construction in the lot next door when we moved in, with some parking spaces in front facing the street and more parking spaces in back, facing the alley, which was a lot lower, so there were stairs coming up from the alley. The thing is, because of that apartment building, I could get to our house from the alley. I don't know what happened to the house that had been there before the apartment building went up; I should google that. There were a few other apartment buildings like it on that block, and other places. It's just what they did when an old house burned down or was condemed. At that time nobody would have bought a new house in that neighborhood. Farther west, you'll find newer houses in the midst of older houses; those were still upscale neighborhoods with appreciating property values, but our neighborhood was strictly low end rentals by then, although most of the old houses had majesty about them, and it lingered even when they'd been brutally converted to apartments, although really it was better when an old house was demolished and a new apartment building took its place. If the old houses had any feeling, I'm sure they were embarrassed by what they'd become. Except for the houses still owned by the families that had bought them post-war, and were waiting for the kids to grow up before moving out. I'm sure they took a beating in the housing market, but I think they had their priorities straight. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that the grandchildren of people who sold before the real estate market in that neighborhood crested are the miserable little misers straining to stay ahead of the general collapse closing in on all of us, and I'm just as certain that the grandchildren of the people who lived out their childhood and adolescence in the same house where their parents had lived for thirty years or more have a sense of home that transcends physical or financial structures; an awareness of their own continuity in the temporal world.

I have to admit, it felt really good, writing all that. And there's more!

The thing is, the house on the other side of that new apartment building had mulberry bushes in the back yard, and for the two years I was walking home to that house from my grade school four blocks away, at this time of year, the last couple weeks of the school year, for at least a least a few days, there would be mulberries waiting for me at the top of those stairs, just before I got home.