Pendulum...

The past six months I've felt like I was on a pendulum... swinging back and forth, stopping here and there, always landing on the one thing that felt more urgent than anything else I should be doing.

In the spring, it was finding balance between clearing out the gardens and quilting. The gardens won out for a while. The early perennials were already up: the forget-me-nots, the orange poppies, the bachelor's buttons, the pasture daisies, and lots of snowdrops. It was the perfect time to clear away any weeds before the summer plants started to push through. And the lilacs... oh, my. The four shrubs were loaded with blooms, and smelled heavenly.

And then quilting won, because I needed to finish up my show quilts by the end of May. For a solid month, I sat with a quilt on my lap every evening, hand quilting or embroidering or binding. And every nice day, I was looking out the windows, wanting to be outside.

And for that same month, I watched it rain, then shine, then rain. I was grateful for the rain, because quilting had to be the priority. But what I really wanted was to be outside, weeding and edging and pruning, keeping an eye out for the perennials pushing up through the bark into the light. 

So I breathed a huge sigh of relief the day I turned in my quilts. Time to garden!

Somehow we found time for some weekends away: Tri-Cities with cycling friends, Port Angeles for two winery weekends, Whidbey Island for a family wedding. Fun... but getting distracted from the yard and flowers was also frustrating.

Another long weekend of rain gave me a chance to wrap up another project: making a list of a huge pile of household items, clothes, and books (lots of books) headed for Goodwill. I've been clearing out drawers and closets, trying to downsize. And everything has landed in our small studio apartment (out of sight, out of mind).

And then, back to the garden. The newly planted dahlias grew fast, and there's much to learn about growing these flowers. The farm stands and nurseries started putting plants on sale, and a few came home with me to be added to the perennial garden before fall. And the weeding never ends. Never.

And neither do household chores, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking. But we won't go there today.