Snow Bird Comes Home

(but without the snow)

It's fitting that after such a rough day yesterday I would wake to a ghost landscape all covered in white; the last gasps of past dreams clinging to stems and freezing in whorls on glass. For a few minutes the sun cut itself a hole in the clouds and made glitter fall from the sky. Tiny icy particles in the air lit by sun as though the finest fairy dust was drifting down. I made Philip look to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Because that would have been alarming what with me not being on drugs and all.

My garden has been hugely neglected since we've lived here. We have done some things in mad spurts only to have to let it go wild again while we were trying to make the store work out, or looking for work, or making stuff for my business. My last garden got so much more attention and even though I am not the kind of gardener to stay on top of weeds even in the best of circumstances, it was a wonderful place to hang out.

At last I can turn my attention to my house and garden. I can make things for us, rather than others. I can spend more time cleaning up my yard and shaping it. This year is shaping up to be one in which everything is pared down, streamlined, simplified, and returned to some kind of rhythm. It's been a long time since I've had a daily rhythm.

It also seems symbolic that today my first seed order arrived from Territorial. Symbolic because seeds are the ultimate in new beginnings; hope in the tiniest package; promise of abundance and they bring us from the present to the future seamlessly.

Everything still feels raw, which isn't surprising since my whole life shifted yesterday, so I'm not yet feeling the relief of lifted weight off of my shoulders, not entirely. A small little part of me, though, is already beginning to feel a great whoop of freedom explode from my chest. A great big happy holler that I'm so ecstatic to be returning to my life of "drudgery" as:

Being a housewife or a homesteader is only boring and drudgery if you... damn, I will never understand why some people find it boring. We're all different, let's leave it at that.

I do have to buckle down on Friday to produce a tutorial for Whip Up who have kindly expressed interest in posting my instructions on making bath bombs. But I'm not doing it for pay or for traffic to my blog. I'm doing it because this project I'm going to share is so cool and really fun for kids. I'll keep you posted on when they might post it (which will depend on me giving them the tutorial in a timely fashion!)

A new/old/loved chapter of my life is opening up. I'm glad it's still midwinter so I can adjust before having to kick into gear in the yard. Tomorrow is my Master Gardening class and I intend to bring healthy food so I don't raid their nasty donut stash. So I'm off to make potato salad.

Really, I think my life may have just turned a corner. It's too bad it had to be so painful, but at least I'm home again.