Befores and Afters

A friend recently told me that from afar my life looked idyllic. I had to think about that. Idyllic;  Adj.: Extremely happy, peaceful or picturesque. 

Hmmm. I guess it could look that way.  I’ve always tried to be honest in my social media posts. I never use a filter or photoshop on people, especially not myself, and only filter other photos to bring the color up to the vibrancy of real life.  But one thing I recognize is that I am a master cropper. A castoff shoe, a cluttered countertop, a basket of laundry, all end up on the virtual cutting room floor. 

I crop stories, too, to protect my family’s privacy. I way over-share my own stuff, as you well know, but their stories are not mine, even though the pain they can cause often is.  It’s not at all that we don’t have trials.  We have scrapes and snags like everyone; marital fussing, belligerent offspring, embarrassingly deferred maintenance, and shocking sinks towering with three days of cereal bowls and soup pots. 

 I guess I don’t need to justify anything. We are a pretty typical family in most ways. I will admit that the Littles have an unusually close relationship. I thank God everyday for sending Nano for Jonah.  But we argue and fuss and get our feelings hurt and feel lost and alone and overwhelmed, just like everyone else. 

By cropping out some stories I guess my life can sometimes look like a glazed donut, but trust me when I say there have been heartbreaks and tragedies. Doughnuts have holes.  I’m not trying to depict our lives as one big “After” picture. Sometimes I just forget you haven’t seen the “Before”. 

*****

Before: our garden area, long neglected.  Last year at this time I was still nearly bedridden after three months of severe shingles and the the sledgehammer of Hashimoto’s. Neglected weeds send down deep roots. 

 This is AFTER two days of weeding!  

5 days in:

The never ending burn pile...

My goal had been to get all the prep work done during the week so we could plant that Saturday. We lost a day to rain, and the near equivalent to lollygagging, whining and faux weeding (which is when children look like they are weeding, but upon close inspection are counting the stripes on rolly polly bugs). 

That Friday, Guy and I had a date night, toodling around Lowe’s gathering cinder blocks and fence poles, but our plans for lush garden plantings were thwarted by endless racks of tomatoes and not much else. We got some takeout and watched the tail end of the sunset from the Petco parking lot.  Dating in the era of covid.  

In vegetable desperation, on Saturday we hopped over to the little garden center here in town. I seldom stop there, guilty of opting for low price over local.  It was so amazingly beautiful!  One might say... idyllic.



The nursery’s weathered, hand-built shelves were loaded with heirloom-this and hybrid-that, and held aloft over dozens of volunteers; Blue Columbine popping up at the bench corners, Hostas and stripped creepers blanketing the shady ground under benches, and sprays of Alyssum tumbling like giggling babies from old clay pots stacked in rusty wheelbarrows.





It looks like gardening perfection there. Of course, one doesn’t see the late nights spent over hundreds of weeks since this place came into being, or the bin out back of brown stems and dry, crunchy leaves on plants that didn’t make it long enough to find their forever home. 

(What the heck are my kids doing in the background? I didn’t see that happening when I took the picture!)

We bought veggies, mostly just the food we will eat, and a few that will become bug food for sure (I know, I know, cayenne and soap. I remind myself to get around to it every time I see a chewed up leaf).  And each child chose a pack of flowers, for our spirits. 

Then it was back to work...
 

When kids start fighting I should tell them to go get in a garden box. 

A transplanted lavender that is not happy. 

A volunteer!  Miner’s lettuce. To some, a weed, but not to me. It’s cute, the deer don’t like it, so I’m leaving it!

My sweetie, my smiling garden gnome. I’m really grateful to him. Outdoor work is not his favorite. Bugs. Specifically, mosquitoes.  He’s delicious to them, you see.  But he has been very willing. We are setting new fence posts to enclose the entire garden (I have been UNimpressed with the individual wire cages on the boxes, as my arms are not nine feet long). We weeded the beds on the landing and are moving ferns from the creek, which is cheap and exhausting. But he’s been a trouper. 

Blessedly, there are plantings around the property that we inherited. Thank heaven. It’s nice to have someone else’s Afters to give us some courage for our Befores.