Renovations and Reflections

The mountains behind the hills all around our neighborhood are now topped with snow. Winter started with high drama and very cold temperatures that rudely curtailed any more of my smallest green tomatoes from developing further. So I picked through the dying vines and plucked the largest ones, that are still very tiny, from their natal attachments and put them all on the ledge in the kitchen, so I can watch them turn colors as they mature. Now all that’s left is cleaning up and cleaning out the very overgrown garden. We’re doing extreme pruning and sweeping and cutting and tossing and even washing the pathways with a water blaster.  But progress is slow and the frequent rainstorms with their icy winds off the mountains slow us down further. So we dart back into the house and sometimes drive out of here on short errands to the next little town or the one that’s 45 minutes away that has a real supermarket and a pharmacy and a hardware store and a bakery and our bank amongst other retail enticements, like the feed store. These jaunts wake us out of the cocoon of our mundane lives with our petty concerns and spark such renewed appreciation of nature’s awesome omnipotence.

I’ve also noticed one thing in particular about these wintry days. Everything has been reduced down to bare branches and bare bones, except for the mud of course, and that starkness induces in me, lots of time for reflection. There is just no way around this. No softening touches in the garden that make the house look less derelict than it is. Everything is exposed to view and I’m finding myself attempting to fix anything that isn’t exactly right now, that seems to be screaming out for my touch, except for the painting that we’re planning to continue with soon. We’ll be starting in our wee bathroom, the one with the toilet in it. The larger bathroom with the tub and sink will be next, but that’s a much bigger job. We have been getting sporadic results as we attend to each time consuming task of repairs and maintenance and integration of new components, or in my case, components I’ve moved from one spot to another. I am sneaky in my clean ups. I just can’t part with some things, so I relocate them somewhere else and spruce them up. That applies to old pots or plant containers or items in the house that I take off the windowsill and put in a different room on a piece of furniture or vice versa. Changing up the details a bit keeps me happier than if I just discard a treasure and never see it again. I do throw stuff away though if it’s past it or if I want to give it away, but that’s only occasionally. It’s just not often enough according to the great master I live with who knocks over everything just walking from room to room. But I’m paring down in my own inimitable way and I prefer my results to his way of keeping things. And that leads me to the more important introspection that occurs when there’s no place to hide from this sharp winter light, illuminating things on the real interior of my being. It seems to be time to toss out the old me and rearrange a few needed parts, putting them either in the foreground or background, depending on their importance to my essence. I’ve been striving for consistent authenticity my whole life. At times that was almost easy to do. Just being myself despite any odd circumstances thrown my way. But now it seems I’m doing a self-inventory and trying to throw out the stuff that doesn’t suit who I am anymore. Inner housekeeping would be a good term for it. And it appears to be long overdue. But with the advent of the desperate cold and the unending rain we’ve had all year, this seems like the perfect opportunity for my winter housecleaning and winter remodeling of myself.

So far the house and garden still need a lot of help and so do I in my effort to be the best me possible. These are such tough times to get through and I want to get through them with a fair bit of grace and

with all of my dear ones intact. That’s a lot to ponder as I sift through the boxes I filled weeks ago, then stashed behind the sofa, as winter began.