becoming me

I remember at our house on Camouflage Lane, there was some sort of green plant growing around the mailbox.  It seemed to have spread out and wasn't that pretty.  I even thought about pulling it out, but was probably too lazy and never got around to it.

Great advice to new homeowners: Wait one year to pull anything in your yard.

Because do you know what that plant was that grew at the base of the mailbox?

I found out the next spring.  It was phlox.  Google it if you've never seen it.

It has since been my favorite flowering plant of all time.  (Plus it's fun to say and spell.)  And I've been wanting to plant it here for many years.

FINALLY, I have made my first attempt at gardening in this home of ours that we've lived at for almost six years.  The light-purple plant in the middle is....phlox.

There's a long list of things that held me back from planting anything but a vegetable garden.  Mostly, it was probably fear.  Fear of killing what I planted and wasting the money, fear of planting them in the wrong place and it would look ugly, fear of creepy crawlies.

That last one is interesting.  When we are little kids, we're not afraid of bugs.  We'll dig for worms, catch fireflies and grasshoppers, and enjoy watching the slow journey of snails and slugs.  Diego even let a Madagascar hissing cockroach crawl up his arm at an event at the park the other day.  

But then we get a little older and we become afraid of most of those things.

The funny thing is, if you get old enough, you're too tired to be scared of bugs anymore.  At least, I think that's what's happened to me.

(Although I'll still freeze when a carpenter bee buzzes close to look me in the eye.)

But I won't let it stop me from gardening anymore.

These beautiful irises were planted by the people who lived here before us.

Such a surprise to come out one day and see beautiful purple flowers as big as you are!

Sometimes, I wake up wondering who I've turned into.  I have a garden, I read novels, I write, I'm a mother, I cook.  These are all things that never even entered my mind growing up.  (I still say I got through high school never having read a single book.  OK, maybe Lord of the Flies.  But that's it.)

Things that are still the me I always knew:  painting, sewing, crafting, love of language and culture, and I think I'll always love stuffed animals (but don't tell the kids that's why they get so many).

But I also wonder what's out there still waiting to become me?

Even in the busy life of a stay at home mom:  chauffeuring, cleaning, washing, folding, cooking, caring, scheduling, teaching, and loving I am still becoming me.  With every novel I read in the wee hours of the night, with every apron I sew that took two weeks instead of two hours, with every idea I have but have not the time to act on, I am still becoming me.

How relieving to know we are always still becoming.

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."  -Audrey Hepburn

Do you have a garden?  Do you want a garden?  What would you plant?