In the garden.

I have no real crops yet. The potatoes are on, all viney. The strawberries have been devoured by critters. My lettuces seem to have been taken over by volunteer squash of some kind, which baffles me a bit. Maybe it's from the compost.

My boy is sick. Fever. Pukey, poopies. No strawberry festival for us this weekend. No strawberry farm fieldtrip tomorrow, no birthday party for a friend today.

The Mister slept this morning. The boy and I watched a few shows. I did laundry. I bathed him twice. Then, needing a change of scenery badly, we headed out to the garden. My seedlings (peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs of all kinds and so on) are doing very well. And some of my most fruitful thinking takes place as I weed, till, dig, plant. It is quiet work. No television. No internet. No radio. No full-on prattle of boy (he's all too busy digging and pushing and pulling and piling sticks) and my mind unreels like it nearly never gets a chance to, much of my own making. Just wind and bird and the tiller's small electrical whir. A car out on the road. A distant mower. A rumbling city bus a few blocks away.

And I'm at last really copping to the fact of how I've been sad since I lost my job last year and haven't been able to find suitable replacement. Not just the loss of money, but of identity, of usefulness, of engagement. But, too, feeling and knowing how I failed, when not even the local MAU community sustained itself. I've been grappling with building community and see how I have failed to do that on so many levels. How the tensions already present at home have become magnified by this and by that. How MUCH my boy needs and wants more children around all the time. How I mourn not having a brother or a sister for him, and for me. How differently I thought things would be and how I haven't been able to reconcile it all. How little I feel my contribution to my family and to my community are valued, how unfruitful my efforts with almost friends, and how much I seem to need a sense of belonging, and yet have it so little. How deeply, profoundly lonely I am. And how I've tried to fill that void ever unsuccessfully.

So I aim to address it for real. I'm sad, and I feel a bit stupid. But I do have hope. And I have stick-to-it-tiveness. Some changes will have to made, that is clear.

And that's pretty much what it comes to in the garden.