Pruning - Part II

 

When last we met, I was rambling discussing my issues with giving up/making changes/cutting back on things that weren't working in my yard/life/etc..... When I finally agreed to one major change, I slowly started to see that change didn't always have to be a bad thing. Especially when change meant taking something like this:

 

and getting something like this:

As lovely as it was and as nice as it made things, I still fought against other changes. I wanted to continue to struggle with the overcrowding of flower beds and runaway ground cover. To add to the madness of thinking I could do it all, I was also still trying to plant new annuals every year, which added even more to the upkeep. So this spring, I finally said enough is enough. I couldn't do it all and I couldn't deal with the guilt of not being able to do it all. So in a couple of weekends with a very helpful hubby, we cleaned house yard. We kept some Hostas (which we transplanted) and the rose bushes as I believed they were the item that meant the most to the previous owner. We removed all traces of the Pachysandra, added Hibiscus, more Hostas and a couple of new rose bushes. We collected rocks from Lake Ontario to add some character to the gardens and mulched the heck out of them to fight back the determined weeds. I'm not a professional gardener (or photographer), but I'm learning........

BEFORE

AFTER

(Please excuse the sad siding....that is a future project and as they say, "Rome wasn't built in a day..")

BEFORE

 AFTER

 (Again ignore the siding. Apparently the previous owners decided to begin siding the house and only did one half. I call it quirky chic.)

 

 BEFORE

 AFTER

 

The lessons that I learned from all of these changes are something I need to apply to my everyday life. How often do we continue to do the same things over and over, afraid to make a change; whether it's as simple as changing your hair style, to something as big as ending a relationship that is no longer healthy for you? I think you need to let go of something wrong in your life in order to make room for something that is right. My favorite example of this was hubby taking a risk to flight instruct full time. He let go of the security of a full time job that prevented him from his real love of teaching others to fly. As soon as he made the decision to make that change he had new students coming from every direction. 

For me, I had to learn to give a higher priority to what is most important to me in my life, not what I think is most important to everyone else. As I have said before - to my friends who have children, I have no idea how you do it all. Some days work, cleaning the house and maintaining all the relationships in my life, are all I can handle. Add in my love/need to write, 2 pets, and an attempt to exercise, and.....well I don't think I need to tell anyone how there doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day. So I needed to figure out how to protect those things that are most important to me (family/friends/writing) and how to weed out (pun intended) the lesser things......like having a perfectly clean house (no hubby I am not going to stop cleaning) or maintaining a full blown garden. My friend and I began scheduling a weekly night to get together and write. The funny thing is that once we did that, I realized how much I needed to write, which in turn made me say, "I need more time to write." An added bonus is that I get to also spend time with my friend and maintain a friendship that is so important to me. From all of this I'm more willing now to say I'm going to take a couple of hours on the weekend to work. I've made myself say no to a couple of things (nothing that was extreme and nothing that hurt anyone), but it was still hard for me nonetheless to not feel guilt over not doing it all. But I found the more that I ask for the time that I need, the easier it has become and the more readily it has been given. Change is hard; don't get me wrong. This isn't something that I came to overnight and it's not something that I won't struggle with, but my experience with pruning has shown me that sometimes you have to make changes to make something beautiful........

What changes are you contemplating?

Get out your pruning shears......

~ Adrienne

Pruning - Part I

When hubby and I first began our house hunt 5 years ago, we knew the house itself would need to be modest due to our budget. A couple of bedrooms, a garage and a nice neighborhood, were our main goals. I myself had only one concern. I wanted flowers in my yard. All the years leading up to this moment, first in my own apartment and then in our condo, were filled with a simple desire to plant something.....anything.So when we came upon our house it was pretty much what we were looking for. Three bedrooms, a garage (2 car!), and it was in a cozy neighborhood. In addition the house came with......some...ummm.... lovely.....bushes. As you can see from the picture above, these were no small bushes. No sirree. These bushes were apparently planted shortly after the house was built and they were, (according to legend) only trimmed once during that time. What you are looking at folks is actually the top of the bushes. They had grown so much over the years that they essentially tipped over, hence the top became the front of the bushes. What you can't see from the picture is the space behind them, which was large enough to house a small village. Not being fond of the idea of someone or something hiding out in them, we made pulling them out our first priority. Neighbors told us later that they had no idea there was an additional bedroom window on the front of the house until then! In fairness to the previous owners, the woman was elderly and too proud to ask for assistance, so she had done what she could. 

Now what the front of the house lacked in color and aesthetics, the back of the house made up for. Primroses, cone flowers, rosebushes, evergreens and a number of other bushes and shrubs. It was obvious the woman loved to garden and this was her pride and joy. I was thrilled. I could see that some work would need to be done to bring things under control, but it was what I had wanted right? Fast forward a couple more months to the actual closing/moving process and reality sunk in. Knowing the home owner had been ill, it made sense that things would be a little neglected. What we had failed to realize was that the neglect had actually gone on for a couple of years and things were in serious decline. Flower beds were overflowing with flowers that were planned and those that had simply moved in on their own. Not to mention the weeds that had infiltrated, each and every one of the beds. Shrubs were overgrown or half dead, and the others grew at odd angles, competing for sun with a large neighboring tree. The main eyesore ran along the entire length of the back of the house. The area (again due to the large tree), didn't get sun but for about 2 hours a day. Therefore the ground never dried completely, resulting in a soggy, mossy mess. The bushes and plants that attempted to grow there had about an inch of foliage at the top and about 2 feet of dead branches underneath. What did flourish in this area was pachysandra, an insanely fast spreading ground cover. It had spilled itself right over the borders of the flower bed and was threatening to take over the entire yard.

But, again this was what I had wanted right? So I dug in (literally). We dug out the front bushes and replaced them with small (manageable) box woods and rose of Sharon. We removed dead evergreens and cut back anything that stood still. We then took a wait and see approach with everything else. With some pruning and patience we hoped that most of the yard would regenerate itself in a healthy fashion. But the following year brought much of the same. No matter how much had been cut back, some things were just too old and had gone too long with out care to revive themselves. So we removed the shrub that couldn't grow straight and dug out the rampant pachysandra. I was stubborn about a lot of things though. Hubby and I fought discussed saving some things.Trust me, I held onto things that were well past their prime, including a miniature rose bush that had been choked for years by a pair of evergreens. The bush literally produced about 5 flowers in its last year of life, being more of a stump than anything else, but I felt the need to continue trying to save it. He wanted to clean things up and make the yard neater, while I felt an odd sense of loyalty to the previous owner, a gardening kinship if you will. I felt extreme guilt at removing anything she had planted and obviously cared for. I also felt like a failure for not being able to keep up with it and make it look better. 

After a couple of years of the ongoing struggle with things, I agreed to some small changes. We began with the swamp behind the house. Knowing nothing would grow there we decided to turn the space into a patio. That went extremely well, but even seeing those improvements, I was still reluctant to give up - give up my guilt over not being much of a "natural" gardener and my belief that I could do it all. So it took until this year for me to finally say enough is enough. We needed to make some real changes. As much as I loved the idea of gardening, I was not retired nor a trained horticulturist. There were not enough hours in the day that were required to keep everything maintained. I loved summer, but I wasn't being allowed to enjoy it because I was always trying to fix something in the yard. 

I realized that gardening is a lot like life. We hold onto things that aren't working far past their time. Relationships, jobs, addictions, and most of all guilt. Guilt that we aren't doing everything right, that we're not getting everything done, or worse, that we aren't living our life as someone else is expecting us to. Sometimes we need to say enough is enough and start cutting back. Look at things in a different light (especially those areas that don't get sun), rethink the layout of your life.....and most importantly, get a pair of good pruning shears.

~ Adrienne

Next up.......Time for change........

You Have Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself........

I have a fear.....a rather strange one I suppose, but it's a fear none the less. I fear traveling by myself. Anything that involves me, a suitcase and going somewhere outside my neighborhood, can invoke some tremors. Even a road trip can make my heart race a little bit. So let's just say that me walking into the airport Friday afternoon to fly off to NYC, was slightly terrifying. 

I can't explain why I have this fear. If I could, I probably could find a way to limit or change it, but I have no explanation for it. I know it sounds crazy, believe me - I went to college for travel and tourism. I know how INSANE this fear is. Give me one other person to travel with (doesn't even have to be someone I know that well), and I will be completely fine for the trip, any trip, anywhere.....tell me I have to go it alone and I'll be breathing into a paper bag somewhere.

The reason for the trip was a very good one. A really good friend lives there and asked me to come visit, for about the 10th time. (I'm so sorry Amy for being such a scaredy cat!) I've always admired people who can fly off somewhere at a moment's notice to exotic places. One small bag, a passport and an adventurous spirit are all they need. (Yes Amy, I'm also talking about you.) So eventually, I said yes to her invite and I made my travel plans....and I sweated it out for a month. 

What if I miss my flight? What if the cab driver drops me off in the wrong place? What if the flight home is cancelled and I'm stranded at the airport....What if the flight has turbulence and no one is there to hold my hand??? Yes, again, I hear the insanity in what I was thinking, but I thought it anyway and probably much worse. So when the day came for the trip I was exhausted from all of my worrying but still worried all the way to the airport....all the way onto the plane.....through the cab ride (does he really know where he's taking me????) until I found myself at her door and thought......"Well that wasn't so bad."

The rest of the weekend was amazing. Perfect weather (Central Park!), great food, fun times and catching up with a wonderful friend. But my fear had almost won out over all of that. Was I immediately cured of my fear? Hell no! On the cab ride back to the airport the driver commented I may not make my flight home due to all the closed streets from the NYC marathon and his difficulty in finding a way to LaGuardia. I immediately thought "Crap! He is going to drop me off on a street corner in the middle of no where! Thankfully my worrying had paid off in the fact that I left for the airport 3 hours early. (Sometimes it comes in handy.)

But in the end I did face up to a fear (however irrational it may have been) and I am better for it. Guess I should start looking at my list of other fears....(Bungee jumping??.........I don't think so.)

What fears are holding you back from something amazing?

Adrienne

What I remember......

I apologize in advance for the length of this blog, but this is not an ordinary blog....as that was not an ordinary day........


It just didn't seem right. The color of the sky should have been ominous and gray, not blue and certainly not without a single cloud. It's the thing I remember most about that day.....it was a shade of blue I hadn't previously seen and don't think I will again. It was so clear, nothing to detract from that blue and the beauty of the morning. The tragedy of it is, that I will never again view a blue sky without thinking of that morning.

I was living in Albany NY on that day, working as an office manager for my Aunt's business in a women's health clinic. We shared the space with a few other medical services and we were a close knit group. Patty and Tina greeted me with our usual morning catch up before heading in with their first client's, as the day ahead was scheduled to be a busy one. Cathy, the medical tech from the office next to us, shared with me her excitement of the day. Her middle school daughter, was on a school sponsored trip. She'd won an essay contest that allowed her to go with a group to NYC, where they were working/staying on a tall ship in the NY harbor. They had no way to communicate other than email, but she had received a message from one of the chaperones that morning, and her daughter was having a great time.

A short time later Patty came out with her first client and they were discussing something about a plane crash. "The Today show is reporting a small plane crashed into the World Trade Center," I believe is what she said. I remember thinking that it was odd on such a clear day for something like that to happen. The phone rang a few minutes later, as Patty's next client was calling to apologize for being late. "I'm sorry she said, I got so caught up in watching this plane crash story." I asked her what was going on and she was updating me when she let out a scream. "Oh my God! Oh my God. Another plane just hit!" I remember going ice cold at her words. I do not remember anything else from that conversation.

Chaos ensued in a matter of minutes within our little world. Patty's husband, who was a volunteer fireman called to say he and the entire department were heading to the city to try and help. My Uncle who worked with the Red Cross would also leave with a team to help out. Cathy dissolved into hysteria. The email she had received from the chaperones that morning had a picture attached to it. The picture was of the class, on the deck of the ship, smiling away......with the World Trade Center as their backdrop. Her husband arrived shortly after to drive her to the school so they could hopefully be given more information. We gathered in front of the 2 small televisions that we had in the office, watching all of it unfold in complete horror. Random moments that I remember from that day....friends and family calling each other to check in. Even though you knew they were nowhere near any of the sites, you still needed to be sure they were OK. Even between our office and our other locations, we kept calling to check in. The one patient who sat in our waiting room in the midst of all the chaos of that first hour, and read a People magazine, calmly flipping through the pages while Cathy broke down. When Patty came to take her for her treatment, she asked Patty how her day was going, like she was oblivious to anything going on. The calls on all the radio stations for blood drives that were springing up all over the city. There was such a hope at that time that there would be survivors who would need the blood and the slow realization after that none were coming.

The moment of the day when it all became almost too much to bear, was watching the towers fall. Patty, Tina and I stood in a treatment room, huddled around that tiny black and white TV and watched the absolute, unthinkable happen. Towers that enormous and that strong do not fall, they just do not....It just could not be possible and yet it could not have been more real. The remainder of the day is a blur, bad news compounded by more bad news, until a numbness of sorts took over. At the end of the day I sat in my apartment, unable to tear myself away from the TV. I had a futon in my living room that I made into my bed that night. For the next month I slept there, falling asleep every night, some times very late, to the sounds of the news coverage. I couldn't sleep and I couldn't turn the TV off. I was terrified that something else would happen while I was sleeping. I attended a memorial service at my church the night after the attacks, looking for some comfort and not wanting to be alone. We were handed votive candles as we entered the darkened church, and at the end of the mass we one by one placed them on the altar. I took solace in the light the candles radiated and the number of people there with me. It was small, but it was a start.

In the days that followed our conversations were animated, to the point of manic. We all had stories to share, things to say. One of the women in our office told of leaving her house before dawn on the 11th to take her son to an early morning practice. She recalled seeing an airliner flying very low over the area and finding it extremely strange. It was later learned that one of the airplanes had diverted from it's flight path, circling over Albany for a time. The airport had received numerous calls regarding the low flying plane. Another medical tech in the building was off on the 11th and had been out running errands with her infant daughter all morning. As most young mothers do, she had kept her entertained with a children's CD in the car, so had no knowledge of what was happening. The road that led to her home took her by an atomic energy lab where she was met at the street's entrance by a National Guardsman. She was asked for ID, where did she work, where was she coming from and where was she going. When she asked the man what was going on, he looked at her sadly and said "Maam you should go straight home, lock your doors and stay there." The terror that he must have felt in not knowing what was really going on and what other areas may be a target. A client told us an amazing story of not one but four people she knew who had been spared on that day. Her father, along with some other colleagues had been scheduled to attend a meeting in tower 1 that morning. As they made their way to the building someone wanted to stop for coffee, which made them run late. Had they gone directly to the building they would have been in a conference room on the floor where the plane hit. A good friend of hers was a flight attendant who worked for American Airlines out of Boston. She was scheduled to work one of the flights that morning, but had to call in sick when she woke with a stomach flu. And two good friends who worked in separate areas of the WTC ran into each other coming off the subway that morning. They talked of the uncommonly beautiful day and decided on the spur of the moment to play hooky and call into work. They would not have lived had they not done so. I try to keep these stories in mind on the days when something disrupts my schedule or I get stuck in construction the morning I run late for work. There is always a greater power at hand.......

In the following weeks our lives revolved around TV and the news coverage, especially of Ground Zero. Someone brought in a bigger TV and we moved it into one of the exercise rooms. We'd gather around it at lunch time, focused in on the rescue efforts. We cheered every time there was a rescue, became silent when they spoke of a recovery and held our breaths when warnings came of another building possibly collapsing. I remember watching as word came in the middle of a broadcast that everyone needed to be cleared of the area as another collapse was possible. We watched the rescuers and volunteers running with a sense of helplessness. After that moment the TV never went off and in fact was moved into the reception area. I remember vividly, a well intentioned patient telling us one day, that we needed to turn the TV off and get back to the real world, reality. I told her as politely as possible that this was the real world and our new reality. We had family members who were down there helping and until they were home safe and sound, the TV would not be going off.


I've read things this week saying we shouldn't watch TV on the 11th and should try to forget it and focus on something more positive. While I understand the thought behind it (somewhat), I respectfully disagree, just as I did with that patient 10 years ago.  I think more than ever we need to remember everything that happened on that day. Even more importantly the things that happened in the days that followed. How we all began to treat each other with a little more kindness, talked to our families and friends more, took a renewed sense of pride in what it means to be an American. We heard amazing love stories from people who lost their spouses. We heard of children left without parent's who they adored. I'll never forget the interview Matt Lauer did with a little boy who lost his father, a firefighter. Kevin was 10 years old and in the midst of the interview, he broke down, taking Matt right with him. I remember watching that interview and sobbing for the pain that child was going through. They replayed the interview this week and it seemed as though time had stood still and I was sobbing all over again. For a little while the priorities of the world had changed. Firefighters, policeman, military personnel, and a group of ordinary citizens from Flight 93, were treated as heroes. They were revered in the way that celebrities and athletes are. In fact rock stars lined up to be part of a tribute concert to them. We learned to not take one second of our lives for granted and to be thankful for what we have. I think that is a lesson worth being reminded of......

Thank you for letting me share my memories......I'd be honored to hear your memories and thoughts of that day.

                                                                        ~ Adrienne


                                                                     

                                                 

The Little Things......

TGIF......I don't know about you, but this has been a long week. One of those that makes you say "What a week, thank God it's Friday......I've talked about being grateful and the idea of a gratitude journal in another blog post, but I thought for today I would share the items that would make my grateful list. Sometimes it's the little things.....

In spite of the havoc wreaked by Irene, I'm thankful to report that all of my friends and family who were affected came through it safe. Trees down, power our, some shingles blown loose, but all repairable. Things can be replaced. People can not.

My husband going for a walk with me. When Hubby and I were first dating we loved to go for long walks late at night. Something about the quiet and the dark that made us feel comfortable to open up and be completely honest with each other. We learned so much about each other during those walks. To this day, if something big is going on in our life, there is nothing like a walk to get us talking. By the end of the walk we may not have things completely figured out, but we both feel better.

                                                                                                              

Great neighbors - We have a group of neighbors who are very close and very supportive of each other. (I must point out that one couple doesn't officially live in the neighborhood but they are adopted neighbors, based on the amount of time we see them.) They all take turns doing things like mowing each others lawn, snow blowing sidewalks, taking in garbage cans, and mail. They feed our cats, give us veggies from their gardens, let us use their pool and have impromptu dinners. This week one of the neighbors is in the hospital fighting a bad case of pneumonia and will probably be there until next week. During tonight's impromptu dinner, I offered to cook something for the husband so he wouldn't have to worry about meals. This led to all of us discussing meals that would be brought over when his wife returns home so that neither one of them will need to worry about food. After dinner, the men all made their way to our house to help Hubby apply sealant to our newly cemented driveway. Many hands make light work is the saying.....I'm thankful for the many hands and for the caring of all of them. Thank you - Samir and Candi, Debbie and Burt, Bill and Denise. Come home soon Debbie!   

                                                                    

And as usual the 2 who always make my list of things I'm thankful for......

 

What are you thankful for today?

~ Adrienne