The Frost is on the Pumpkin

This is going to be a lame-o post becauuuuse…oh, where to start?

1. I’m not yet focused on perfume because…I got six tons SIX TONS SIX TONS of topsoil!  And 3 tons of mushroom compost. (my dad’s saying about defecation or losing my eyesight definitely applies here)

2.  I am not a wealthy woman.

3. so….guess who’s moving the bulk of this around?

4.  Temps dropped like a stone and it rained…and I am jammed like the 405 at rush hour – it’s this weird jam, where I can breathe (enough to get some air into my lungs and brain) but I can’t BREATHE.  The upper sinuses are still packed and I’m vaguely logy and cranky and off-kilter. Ick – but there ya have it.  So the only perfume I’ve been wearing, besides dirt and chicken crap, is Amouage Gold and a rose attar from Bulgaria atop Creme Riche from Diptyque (which I will review anon – it’s really pretty!!!).  But honey, I am wearing the HELL out of it!  You can smell me a mile away.  Ask me if I care.

So…here’s the dirt on the dirt.  Nine tons of matter is a lot of particles.   Saturday, my friend’s 14 yr old son came over to help.  Ah, youth.  He moved the living daylights out of the first ton – y’all have seen my kitchen garden, with the cute little gravel paths…Mario Andretti couldn’t maneuver a wheelbarrow full of stuff in there – not with everything still growing – so we did a lot of shoveling.  Ah, age.  Every bone in my body is yelling at me!  But it looks sooo clean and pretty in there, with all the new compost and dirt – and today I put those little round carrot seeds and the Japanese spinach seeds in…..and the golden beets..and some collards (the Summer collards are looking mighty raggedy).

Seeds are a great metaphor for ….oh, heck….for a whole lot of things.  Planting seeds in late Summer is a leap of faith and always a bit melancholic; today was a gloomy day, portending rain with crickets sawing away at 2pm  – there’s this stretch of road that runs just before the Princeton exit – it sits above the little valley and even in the early Spring it has an Autumn feel to it; whenever I drive along that stretch I think of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls and hot coffee in the am.  Part of me wants to start ripping out everything in the garden, battening down the hatches, justgetitoverwithalready…planting seeds in Autumn reminds me that not everything has to be rushed.  There’s still life left in my broccoli plants and most of the tomatoes still on the vine will ripen before the killing frost.  What’s my hurry?  The carrot seeds will germinate – it’s going to be 80F tomorrow – and I don’t have to jump the gun on every thing.  It’s highly unlikely that we will get a killing frost or blizzard on Friday.  And if it does?  I’ll replant.  It’s the same with perfume – I’ve had to force myself to quiet my rattly mind and not just spray and “okay, what’snextwhat’snext,WHAT’SNEXT??”It’s interesting to force myself to just settle the hell down and not wash it off 4 minutes after I apply, so I can put something else on.  Kinda like the tomatoes and broccoli – and the newly planted carrot seeds.  I. Can. Wait.  And let the beauty unfold.

I’m definitely doing it with that dirt.  Can you imagine?  I actually thought I could move – by hand – NINE TONS of matter…in a matter of a day!  It’s actually a bit amusing, once you get past the batshit crazy part.  But like with the seeds and the perfume, I’m letting it happen in the fullness of time.  I don’t have a choice.  I don’t have a Bobcat and I don’t have a gardening staff.  Just me.   It’s not going anywhere, so there’s no reason to give myself a hernia or a heart attack trying to get it all done at once.  I’ll move it in place of renewing my gym membership!   The perfume is a little more difficult, I’ll admit – there are so many – and I’m so far behind. …but if I don’t get to all of them…..there’s always next Autumn!  In the meantime, I’m actually enjoying the slow reveals!

Are you Slow Reveals?  Or are you What’snextWhat’sNEXT?  What’s your weather like right now and what are you wearing?  Can you breathe?

And do any of you want to come down here and help me move this blasted dirt!  ps.  those boxes just behind the dirt are the raised beds for the mirror-kitchen garden.  Now filled with my own compost and the topsoil they are kind of creepy, like elongated graves.  Come Spring, though……….ooooooooh!  Serenity now….I can wait.  Really.  I can!