This Perfectly Imperfect Life

Acceptance seems to keep coming up recently with respect to me, my health and my limitations. Funny how it sneaks up on you when you least expect it, but it's a welcome companion, bringing with it a kind of peace as well. I may finally be getting the hang of this living with disease thing. I made a difficult decision day before yesterday, but feel good about it because it was the right thing for me to do. It's often a position I'm in unfortunately, (not being able to do everything I want to do because of my health).  As much as it saddens me and despite only having attended my first meeting in April, I've left the Friends Of the Library (aka FOL).    I am crushed with disappointment, but, the negativity that was hanging over my head because I couldn't be the member I had hoped to be was even more crushing and I just don't have room for that kind of negativity.   I wanted to tell them in person, but the next meeting is tomorrow and we'll already be he...

It's not a big thing, at least not for someone who is a normal, healthy folk, unlike myself. Our yard isn't large, as you can see from this photo (there is grass out of sight, but not much more), and taking care of the grass, along with my garden, has been very, very important to me. (Excuse the bare patches. With our wacky weather and cooler temps, I've held off on re-seeding). But, as time has passed, cutting the grass has become more and more difficult, not to mention more painful, for me to do. Now my arms literally shake for two days after cutting the grass and hurt for a week. Due to re-landscaping at the other end of the property and subsequent widening of both of our gates, the landscapers now have to come through our gates with the mowers to access the back end of the property. They could have fit through the one gate with their old machines, but knew I preferred to take care of our section and let it be. The idea of them coming through our yard with machi...

For more info and to join in: Grow Write Guild More catching up to do with my Grow Write Guild prompts! Then I will be up to date, though I've just learned that prompt #6 has been posted, so perhaps I will forever be playing catch up with these, as I usually feel in other areas of my life. But, I'm having so much fun writing because of the GWG prompts, I don't mind being behind with posting. Prompt #4: Write about your garden mentor or muse. Written May 13th: Welp, this is the first prompt I've had a little trouble with.  I didn't begin gardening until my 20s and I did so rather accidentally, out of the blue and on my own.  (Click here to learn more).  I've never given much thought to a mentor or muse before. The first place I turned to, the first place I turn to with anything, even now, is books.  I don't recall if I took many out of the library or not, but I did buy a lot of bargain/clearance gardening books at (the now defunct) Borders and B...

For info & to join in:  Grow Write Guild I've got quite a bit of catching up to do here so let's get started! Prompt #3: Describe your garden right now. Well, things have grown in so much since I wrote on this prompt in my journal back on May 9th, I now feel as though I should do it over! But, I won't, I'll go with what I already wrote.     A container garden looks incredible while it's in full bloom, but when mine isn't, it sure doesn't look like much except a bunch of messy pots to me.  But, there's a lot of writing here and I don't want to make this post super long by adding a ton of photos.  The point of this is prompt to me is to describe, not literally show, my garden, so that's what I tried to do.    In front of me is the "main" garden in my humble (small-ish) back yard. I already pulled out all the containers of dead roses and the half dead roses that weren't rooted to the ground. (Despite being i...

For my latest edition of #GardenWalk on Connect*Share*Grow , "Why #GardenWalk?" click here .

The inspiring Gayla Trail, aka You Grow Girl , created the Grow Write Guild , a "Creative Writing Club for People Who Love to Garden," in March and I discovered it last week via twitter gardening friend Louise's post " My Dream Garden? "  Every couple of weeks, Gayla posts a new prompt on her site.  I've been catching up since last week, first reading all of her posts related to GWG and then writing on prompts one and two.   Just before discovering the GWG, I shared my recent struggles with my writing here . Since that post, I've been feeling positive and revitalized. And these GWG prompts? Such fun and perfect timing!  I thanked Gayla on twitter for doing this, telling her that.   So let's get started!   Prompt #1: My First Plant (Write about your first plant). I wrote briefly about my first plants, two containers of bright yellow Pansies, in my first column for #gardenchat in " Getting To Know You ."  "...which al...

My gardening memoir column, Adventures In Gardening, is now known as The Portable Homestead!  For today's post, "Spring Cleaning Inside & Out," on Connect*Share*Grow, click here . You can find an Archive of all of my columns to date here on Diggin' Around by clicking here .

I feel so far away from writing at this moment. And as a result, I feel... discouraged, sad, pointless. Drifting. In a daze. And I don't know what to do about it. But, it's time to start somewhere. A Writers Journal : This new addition to Diggin' Around, which has been in the works since this Winter, is to help me chronicle my journey with writing, which I hope in turn helps some of you who may be struggling as well, like me. I have written since I was a little girl, inspired by Louisa May Alcott's Jo March on a sunny Spring Sunday when I was about 11 years old. I have wanted nothing more since then but to be a published author of novels. I am a writer. It is what I know I am, and what I am supposed to do. So why, a month shy of my 38th birthday am I no farther along than I was when I was that little girl? The normal distractions come to mind: Life in general can be less conducive to creativity for some more so than others.  Working full time and going to colle...

For the latest edition of my gardening memoir column,  Adventures In Gardening , now on Connect*Share*Grow , please click here .

For the latest edition of my gardening memoir column, Adventures In Gardening, on The#gardenchatBlog, click here .

For today's column, please click here .

For newer friends who don't know: My parents divorced when I was 6 months old in 1976 and my father died before I turned 4 years old in 1979. To say he didn't treat my mother well is an epic understatement. To say he was abusive is an epic understatement. His 'tough' city fire fighter co-workers were afraid of him. He drank heavily, another epic understatement, from a very young age and, for all intensive purposes, drank himself to death. He had his first heart attack at the age of 36. He died shortly after his 3rd heart attack at the age of 44. It was a case of Doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, but Mr. Hyde was in control more often than not, whether he was sober or not. And despite everything he did to her, had she known he was lying in a FL hospital bed dying, she would have gone to see him to say goodbye. But my grandparents didn't want her to know. That's another story for another time. Grandmother eventually told my mother his ashes had been scattered in...

For my latest gardening memoir column on the #gardenchat blog , please click here . To scroll through all of my past columns, please visit the Adventures In Gardening archive, by clicking here . Hope to see you there! 

The Southern novel I'm reading in the waiting area while Mom has her endoscopy, The Tender Mercy Of Roses by Anna Michaels, is in a word: Incredible. "When you leave home, even if it's just to go to the Piggly Wiggly for a loaf of bread, it's possible to become somebody else. It's possible for regret to fly out the window like a blackbird and something wonderful to fly back inside and perch on your shoulder. Something with yellow wings that sings a song you heard in childhood but thought you'd forgotten." With writing like that, it's a great distraction while waiting. For the most part anyhow. I'm definitely not liking Not being the patient and now feel awful that this is what Hubbs & Mom have gone through when I am. I'm praying it goes well, that it's easy on her afterwards and will show she won't have to have surgery on her esophagus, at least not right away, that with time and speech therapy, its' function will conti...

Actually, this is about one of my favorite things in our home: the mantle. Many years ago, when I was a little girl and my hometown was still a wonderful community in which all of yours needs could be met without leaving its' one square mile, one of my mothers many purchases for us from the used furniture store down by the hospital on the river was this fireplace mantle.  Back then it was more off white than yellow and the barn red insert was a faux black & white marble.  It also came with one of those light-up electric log sets that had a tiny fan which blew strips of yellow, red & orange cellophane for that "cracking fire" affect.  I loved it!  I remember lying on the livingroom floor in front of it, in the dark, watching & listening to the "fire." Fast forward to 2004.  I'm 29 and Mom decided to get rid of the mantle.  She told me if we didn't pick it up by the end of that weekend, she'd take it apart and get rid of it herself.  ...

A week ago this past Friday, I stopped in Bog Lots with Mom.  I love browsing in that store! I don't always buy something, but I do more often than not. I think my original intention before we got there was to look for books (most are $2 & $3) but I'm easily distracted upon walking through those sliding glass doors!  I love Patriotic decor in our home from May through September 11th (some stays year round as it does in our northern home) and I immediately set out to get a closer look at what they had on display in the center of the store.  (Told ya, easily distracted!) Large glass candles for $8!  Now that caught my attention.  Sniffing candles is dangerous business for me - one bad sniff and I've got a migraine!  But that bright red one... "Apple Cobbler."  Hm...  I chose to live dangerously, pulled the lid off and took a tentative sniff. Instantly I was walking into my husband's family cabin again, in the summer, and greeted by the mu...

A week ago today, Mom and I took a walk around the town we were both born & raised in. I've been battling an upper-respiratory infection for a couple of weeks and decided getting some fresh Autumn air would do me good, or if nothing else, get me out of the house for a bit. Why I wanted to take a walk around our hometown instead of where we're living, I don't know but I'm very glad I did. I wasn't surprised that it's changed. All places do with the passage of time and despite not having lived there since 1993, I did work in town off & on into 2003, and by then it had already changed a lot, but what a transformation it has apparently gone through in the last 8 years! Aside from my Church, grammar school and 2 shops, it literally doesn't resemble the place of my childhood & teen years, nor does it Feel like that place. As a matter of fact, I felt nothing as we walked! It's That different now. As you look at the buildings, their architecture and ...