things are pretty okay over here.

Okay Okay, I haven't been around much lately. I mean, trust me, I've been around. I just haven't been here.

 

So here's a bit of an update. I got into every school I applied to. Which sounds more impressive than saying I got into both schools I applied to. Yes, there were only two. But still. I know, you're shocked that someone who already ended two sentences with prepositions in this paragraph alone is such a hot commodity. Such are the ways of the world.

 

Anyway. Yesterday I sent my acceptance to my first choice. Although still in the 'unofficial' stages, this is a huge step for me.

 

I'm moving to the mountains, guys. I'm headed west. SHIT IS CRAZY RIGHT NOW. Mostly in my head and ALL OF THE EMOTIONS. Most of them good, even.

 

Updates on other parts of my life? I'm still not an aunt yet. My sister and I went and got pedicures last night and I was secretly willing her to go into labor the entire time. I know, I'm such a bitch. But seriously, if you'd have seen her, you'd agree it's a favor. Even if her water broke in a nail salon. Can you imagine the scene? God, I love scenes.

 

My little toenails are bright red now and ready for spring, along with the rest of me. Thankfully, the overall climate has been totally conducive to my desire to be outside as much as humanly possible. AKA anyone who doesn't have their windows down in a show of solidarity with the earth needs to chill the eff out and breath in some of this lovely spring air.

 

On Friday Matt and I went to the Black Keys show but not before we sat out on a patio and had drinks in the sun. Drinking beers outside in the sun probably falls pretty close to my all time three favorite activities. I mean really, I wore a dress and flip flops. It was pretty stellar. Now I'm trying to thinking of my three favorite activities. Oh brother. Another post for another time.

 

On Saturday we went to Indiana's LARGEST NATURAL WATERFALL. I love spectacle and things that claim to be the '-est!' of anything. That was a win. Packed a picnic and took off to the west. Turns out, it's only like an hour from where we live. Anyway, we tooled around there for a while and then came home and watched a basketball game or two since I'm apparently not immune to March Madness, and then I jaunted off for some beers with a couple of ladies I know with Irish heritage. I mean, I'm always in it for beers. Plus green is totally my favorite color.

 

On Sunday I weeded, tilled, and planted in my garden and read my book on the front porch. I've got little sproutlings coming up from last year and I'm so impressed with myself. I come from a long line to gardeners, so to not have inherited this ability to nourish plants to life would have been pretty damn depressing.

 

I'm feeling a little sun-tanned. I don't hate it.

 

 

Back to checking craigslist for apartment listings every five seconds.

 

 

 

i ran into A TON of worms yesterday.

As the warm summer rain started pounding my back yesterday afternoon, I only really had one thought in my head. I kept methodically sinking my hand-shovel into the increasingly wet earth, and with every repetitive movement, I felt it echo again and again.


I'd still rather be out here than inside anywhere.


The thunder rolled closer and my visibility started diminishing; it was really pouring now. Plus, I had marginally short white-printed shorts on that were getting soaked, and no underwear. (I really have no idea why I wasn't wearing underwear, I don't typically go commando- either I was feeling particularly free yesterday or I really needed to do laundry.) I finally gave into the thought "As much as I'd like to make friends with Manfriend's new neighbors... it's weird enough that I'm out here frolicking in the rain, I probably don't need to welcome attention to my nether-region on top of that."  It was time for a break.


I stepped up onto the porch out of the torrents of water falling from the sky for a moment and looked at my new garden. It's not much, really, about a six by eight foot plot.


But it's mine.


This need I have to plant seeds and till soil everywhere I go isn't out of the blue, I've grown up amid green thumbs and lush greenery. My mother and grandmother can damn near cram a stick into the ground and I swear in a week it'll be alive with purple blooms. I remember following my Nan around barefoot from my topsy-turvy toddler steps, learning which little leaves were weeds and how to pull them up from the roots. I never stood a chance, there's something about having plants growing around me that feels like home- especially when as a kid and home changed semi-frequently. Even since my first reign away from the comfort of my parents' roof, I've been coloring the world around me in blooms and lugging around potted plants for comfort, despite the fact that I can't seem to summon the desire to plant my own figurative heart-roots any one place.  


As my mind flashed through this sequence, I mentally lauded myself for learning what soothes my crazy.

Because I have a lot of crazy.

I stood there staring out into the rain and attempted to wipe a combination of sweat and fallen water off of my face, basically only managing to paint my forehead with dirt, but it didn't matter. I was just waiting for the showers to slow down long enough to finish planting everything, my mind was racing with a plan and an almost instinctual need to carry it to the end. Plus, the worms don't give a shit what I look like when I'm uprooting their whole worlds with new life-forces.

It wasn't long before the sun came back out, yesterday was one of those days that the forecast "Scattered Showers' comes from. I hurried to get back to transplanting, mapping, digging, and watering until everything felt right, until I was sure that everything would thrive and grow. When it was all over, I was covered in mud,  and happier than a goddamn bug in a rug.


It struck me as Manfriend opened the front door to examine my handiwork and caught sight of me, half-smirking, half shaking his head at me as if in frustration at an unruly child, that this is what I'm good at, this what I do, this is part of who I am.

I'm a freaking nut job when it comes to commitment, I'd sooner chew off one of my own limbs than agree to have myself planted in one place for the foreseeable future. I have an aversion to labels. I enjoy contradiction in character, like a giant question mark dicking on down the road. I'm terrified of being pigeon-holed into a group that will keep me from flowing on to another if it strikes me fancy.

But I can commit to this one. 

I am a gardener. 

I need the feeling of making things grow and prosper around me at all times. I need to get dirty and bend over until my back is stiff and map living colors in my mind. Gardening is the closest thing I have to therapy, an earth-shaking spiritual experience, or enlightenment. It lets me get dirty and gives me something beautiful to share with the world.

Planting things in soil gives me the AHA! moments I need, and through teaching me how to make things grow, it teaches me how to make me grow. I wish everyone a hobby that makes them feel so right.

Plus, it basically gives me a free pass to play in the mud, and I definitely don't hate that.


XO Sare

growing some green.

I'm going to be a real-life gardener!!!!!!!

 

 

Having a a garden to tend to is on the life-goal list. However, since I'm kind of a vagabond and always on the run renting, I've never felt compelled to sink a bunch of money into a garden that in three or four or six months I'll be leaving, forever. 

 

This is kind of an unfortunate fact, since I've been semi-obsessed with plants and soil- dwelling growth-forms since I can remember.

 

You see, it all started because my grandparent's had this lake-cottage in northern Michigan while I was growing up and I'd spend most of my summers there. It was the best thing, ever. The place in all honesty holds about 85% of my fondest memories from not just childhood, but life. STILL. So anyway, without dwelling on the fact that the cottage has now been sold to a pair of annoying young-rich from Texas who don't even LIVE THERE ALL SUMMER, thus sending myself into a downward spiral of depression that would be further perpetuated by reading all my old letters from friends and lovers and listening music from my late high school/early college  Bright Eyes phase, while subsisting on nothing but Nutella and boxed wine for the next several weeks until Manfriend runs an intervention on me, I'm going to get back on track.

 

My grandmother, we'll call her Nan, because that's what I call her, had the most glorious of gardens at said lake-house. Talk about colorful. This woman has a true green thumb. I would follow her around, learning plant varieties and helping her weed for HOURS every day. As a semi-ADD child, this was a fairly major accomplishment. Anyway, she'd teach me things and point out new buds on plants and we'd spend a large portion of each day tooling around the garden.

 

QUALITY TIME.

 

So anyway, that's where my love of gardening developed, and since I'm only a quasi-adult and not a full-blown-adult, I still use my parents' address as my "permanent residence" and I rent, so gardening hasn't really been in the cards for the past seven or so years. 

 

BUT, I do have several plants that I've been schlepping around with me for years, the most impressive of which is named Cash, who I acquired my sophomore year in college when he was merely twelve inches in height and is now AT LEAST four feet tall. And yes, I name my plants, and I also talk to them, because they're practically pets to me. Cash is getting REAL heavy. And I have to keep putting him in bigger pots so that his roots can breathe an whatnot. It's a love-love situation. I've kept him alive for SIX YEARS.

 

 

SIX YEARS. That's three times longer than my longest relationship. Cash and I are a TEAM. We've come a long way from me forgetting to water him for days at a time then stumbling home drunk and pouring half of my before-bed beer in his pot.  I think he stayed alive then just because I was willing to share. And a 19 year-old sharing their last beer with a plant in need of hydration is nothing short of heartwarming.

 

There are a couple other plants too, but Cash is my finest acheivement.

 

ANYWAY, I've been not only ansty for Spring to get here and defeat Winter, but I've also had this compulsion to dig around in the soil and deposit some seeds lately, which is kind of a drag because my lease is up in the middle of May and Katherine is moving to South America to escape the shitty state of affairs here teach English and frolic happily for an undisclosed amount of time down south. Manfriend will also be moving relatively soon, so that location is also a bust. 

My my desire to breed new life in a location completely outside of my own body cannot be squelched. 

 

There's a great deal of pride for me in making something grow, giving it life.... something that ISN'T a human child. And apparently in being really creepy about it, too.

 

So, this weekend, Manfriend purchased me a mini-greenhouse.

 

And I almost lost my shit right there, because WOAHHHH.

 

I'm now the owner of a mini-greenhouse!

This is going to be AWESOME, look at all those spout growing-holes.  






I plan on growing vegetables, so I can feel like I'm 'living off the land' and whatnot. 






I have no idea how long it's going to be before I need to start transplanting these little suckers, but I'm really hoping I have my new living situation figured out before their roots need more space to grow and I have to transplant all of them, because if I have to re-pot all of them before I move it's going to be like 348972398473978 pots and a total pain in the ass..... if they even grow to begin with.... which they will, obviously.






After all,  Cash survived!


I'll let you know how it goes. 


XO Sare