Weeding

Predictably, summers grow weeds.  The rain nourishes them.  I spent much of the weekend in the garden pruning, pulling, yanking the sprouts I guessed did not belong.  Since I don't really know what I am doing, I am sure that I sacrificed some real plants for some false ones, mistaking bursts of green for thorns, what is ugly for what is beautiful.  I gardened long into the night until it was too dark to see the clover spuds amidst the hibiscus and hydrangeas. 

These days feel filled with weeds, real and metaphorical, taking things from here to there and back again.  Having moved two kids to college within five days of one another, I have transported my share of belongings.  There is a steep learning curve, twins intensify everything.  Shallow brightly colored bins are the answer, at least for the beginning.

I remember a friend telling me that the only two significant Septembers are the one when your child begins kindergarten and then when that same teenager enters college. Today I saw a mom helping her daughter pick out a backpack for her first day of school.  I was empty-handed, searching for a few things my daughter had forgotten to pack.  Always efficient, she was a little too spare in her choices.

Just before she left, she recommended a book, "Tolstoy and the Purple Chair."A line from that memoir resonated with me today: "Good things have happened before and will happen again.  Moments of beauty and light and happiness live forever."

My nest is not empty.