Friday, May 18, 2012

Pulling Weeds

My modest home in Austin has undergone a few changes, great and small, in the past month.  The red and mustard paint was stripped from the living rooms walls, replaced by classy lookin' light blue.  We've repainted the hallway and kitchen, though the handles haven't made it back on the drawers yet.

Last weekend we said goodbye to our roommate and house mama Emily, who set sail for Memphis in a budget van with her cat, her fiance, and a bouquet of purple flowers.

We waved her off with a few tears, the dogs looking bewildered with their noses pressed against the screen door, tails wagging.

Emily was one of the first people who Guthrie loved- he held court at her feet during the evening hours when I was at work, and every morning would rush to her side the minute she walked into the dining room for her morning cup of coffee.

This is of particular value to me seeing that he is slow to warm to most everyone- he has a small inner circle of humans that he trusts, the rest falling under the category of "unfamiliar and scary."  There is much more I would like to say regarding the challenges my dog and I are facing, but I'll save that for another morning.  Suffice to say, I am of the belief that there are times when the universe gives us what we can handle, though we may see it first as misfortune, rather then a chance to grow.

In the weeks leading up to Emily's departure I found myself itching to rearrange my furniture, rid myself of old clothes, and pull those weeds growing wild in the front yard.

We have a lovely garden complete with tomatoes, okra, a fig tree, and 8 foot high sunflowers.  There are wooden beds with basil and other herbs, and bermuda grass attempting to reclaim the front yard.  It's a bit of mess right now.  A beautiful mess, but still one in need of some good old fashioned work.

My thumb isn't green, by the way, so I may be making some trips to the bookstore to buy a few gardening books, and logging numerous long distance calls to my Mom, brilliant gardener that she is. :)

I like the idea that pulling weeds, in a more metaphorical sense, serves many purposes.  We need time to cleanse ourselves of scraps and bits of things we no longer need.  It's like emptying out our emotional junk drawers.  Also, weeding is a necessary part of growing a garden.   I don't know what the next big step will be, and instead of forcing it, I can allow the uncertainty to exist, and do my best to be patient while I sit with all these little seeds that aren't quite ready to germinate.  We want to skip right to the perfect yard full of gorgeous flowers, but we need the yard full of rocks and weeds, the dry beds, need to go through all the little steps before we are ready to grow a garden.

About a month ago my boyfriend and I went on a road trip to West Texas, to visit Big Bend National Park, and his twin brother who was living in the small town of Alpine.  It was a 7 hour drive, on a long flat stretch of highway that seemed to go on forever.  We saw wind farms, and decrepit towns, fields of bluebonnets, and plenty of old churches.  We stopped for dinner in Junction, Texas, at Lums BBQ, for some rather tasty pulled pork sandwiches.  The billboard outside the restaurant read (complete with spelling error), "We're glad your here.  You go- we both lose!"

West Texas is sprawling- the area around Alpine is still in a severe drought, and we passed miles of scorched Earth and thirsty cows.  The sky was enormous, and once we drove into Big Bend we were rewarded with craggy mountaintops and a gigantic thunderstorm that kept us napping in the truck instead of hiking Santa Elena canyon.

We stopped in the desert town of Terlingua, where we saw photos of a town goat that used to drink people's beer by tilting the bottle down his throat, and old stone houses on steep dirt roads.  Some woman tried to give us a puppy, and we saw a handful of locals drinking beer at the corner store, ATV's parked outside, looking like they just stepped out of a Mad Max movie.

We also headed to Balmorhea, a gorgeous natural spring that had been closed that day (we didn't know til we got there) due to an overprotective parent calling the Austin office to complain that his sons had gotten a bad case of the "itchies" from being in the water.  We drove through the town itself, which was rather run down, and saw only one resident in his yard, shooting a gun.  Go figure.

The highlight of that day of driving was the Rattlesnake Museum, owned by a local character who has been collecting poisonous snakes and reptiles for over thirty years.   It cost 3 bucks to get into the museum, and yes, the snakes were all alive, inside their aquariums.  Steven thought it was awesome, and I spent the better part of the visit talking to the owner about how all the Yankees are moving into Austin.

Our last stop was Marfa, home of the fabulous Marfa Public radio station, if you get a chance to listen.  Marfa has become a haven for Brooklynites, artists, and hipsters galore.  Strange to go into a pizza place run by New Yorker's in the middle of nowhere.   It was a strange dichotomy, poor and mostly Mexican, with some fixed gear bike riders and installation art galleries dotting the landscape.

All in all, a memorable and much needed respite from life in the big city. The weather is starting to heat up, though we have had some unusually cool nights that are just stunning out here in the Hill Country.  There are no visitors on the horizon, no big trips planned for the next month, just lots of time to do some reflecting and keep up with various projects.  In short, time to put on those gardening gloves, and get to work.