The Two Pieces of Girl Gone Gardening.

46*, 100% humidity, sw 6 mph wind, Rain, FLOOD WARNING, FLASH FLOOD WATCH



I'm going to talk about me for a few minutes, mainly because I'm in a meditative mood. Contemplating the state of things, perhaps brought on by the coming spring and the new job. You see, there are two sides to the coin of Girl Gone Gardening, an that is mainly why I keep two blogs. There used to be only one main blog, but I realized there was enough material for two, and it could be easily divide between the one side and the other.

I remember, in the 4th grade, perhaps the only memory that stands out for me that year, speaking to a friend I would never see again because that was a year of change. We were standing in the play yard, near the fruitless mulberry trees that graced every generic landscape in the area, where I had broken a toe once, goofing off pretending that I could be a ballerina. We used to pretend a lot, I was an imaginative kid, pretending I was someone else, somewhere else. Anywhere but there. My best friends were a boy and another girl. Even before then, I had realized from perhaps the 1st grade on the monkey bars planning THE GREAT ESCAPE adventure with my playmates, that I never wanted to be rooted in place. I even got brave enough one time, and snuck away from the play yard and down a neighborhood street before loosing my nerve and returning to the playground. No place felt like home, even then as a child. To that other child, whom I cannot even remember the name of, I remember saying very seriously that I never wanted to grow up to live a boring life like everyone I seemed to know. Young or old. And quite seriously back, she told me I wouldn't, she was certain of it. And she spoke so seriously I believed it and so those words and that hope stayed with me through the rest of my childhood, through the remarriage of my mother and the move to my step-fathers house from my grandparents abode and to a new school where I never quite fit in, mainly because of the broken back I'd suffered which set me apart from the other students. I read a lot, about adventures. About girls who were brave and courageous and free from the restraints society tried to put upon them. I soaked it in. I learned about hiking, and the first "mountain" I sat upon in the Marin Headlands gave me hope and a thrill I had never felt before, something I was told I could never do by my mother because I was a girl, and weak and therefore should never do things like that because they were dangerous. This has all shaped me, and when I was set loose eventually from school and home which I had learned to distrust, fear, and even hate a little because I was never taken seriously, sometimes hit, and often cursed at for never being perfect and for not being the person my mother had wanted me to be. With my new found freedom I could not take my further education as seriously as I should of. There was a whole WORLD out there to know, and so little life to see it in. My adventures included backpacking, kayaking, rafting, surfing, bonfires with strangers and drum circles in the dunes where your footsteps glowed green where it was wet by the waves and jelly fish wars. Sometimes I would pack my bag and hike and hitch hike and explore. Sometimes I would meet interesting people, like the nice woman on the bus from Trinidad after I was soaking wet from a sleeper wave which had snuck up on me who invited me to spend time on their sailing boat. Sometimes I found myself with Native Americans, or in places in the redwoods nobody had ever set foot before. A few times I've found myself lost in the desert, and once I was saved by a coyote in the moonlight. Strangers gave me kindness I had never known before, and acceptance. They took me for who I was not what they wanted me to be. I was a creature of the woods, the sea and the road. I was, perhaps the first time in my life, happy. I felt as if I belonged at last. I belonged to the world.
It was in this wondering that I met Mr. Hyper, and it is where the true me was split once again.
The second half, is what I portray here in Girl Gone Gardening. The one trying to settle and be happy where I am. To put down roots. To be that wildflower who can adapt with time. For the most part I can pretend that I am fully here, my thoughts and energy solely on the marriage, the house and the job. But in truth, I do not think I can ever tame the wild aspect of me, like some Robert Frost poem. Sometimes I wish I did not have that wild side, that I could settle and be satisfied like anyone else. I love Mr. Hyper dearly you see and I should be happy with that. But the wild side chafes and struggles everyday, my thoughts tend to drift to the next adventure, the next day off so that I could at least for a few hours at a time be free of everything, wandering in the woods. I think if I were to ever lose this wild side, if it were possible, life would become shades of gray. I would be half alive. And though the daily struggle is sometimes difficult, I would never want to live half a live. So I plant my garden willy-nilly. There are no strait lines. No fake man made borders. Colors have to be bright and wild and so the plants have to be willing to spread and make themselves known and welcome the wild in. There are no box shaped plants, nor will there ever will be. This is my little rebellion against all that is tame and passive. This is why I hate lawn. It just goes against the very nature of what makes me tick. This is who Girl Gone Gardening is.