I knew where Smoky Mountain Autumn was supposed to be, but there were no green shoots above ground. I dug a hole over a foot wide and six inches deep to finally find three shrivelled tubers.
One of my favorite daylilies had been reduced to this. It must have been a deer favorite, too.

I consider this another in a long line of metaphors for my life. I have thought of my dear friend Sandra many times this week. We had long discussions about adapting to change after her husband died. We could not foresee that her first year of widowhood would be her last year of life. We who loved them both would have to adapt again.

I am not one to immediately embrace change, but I am a realist. Change is sometimes forced. Move or lose what is left is the lesson.

Smoky Mountain Autumn has a chance to survive now that it has been relocated and protected. One of its other daylily neighbors totally disappeared. That fate would have been repeated by more every year until most were obliterated.

I made the right choice. With every choice comes some loss. It is a matter of deciding what one is willing to lose in order to maintain or gain something else.

Someday, if we’re are careful and lucky. We will see blooms again on this remnant of a life. That restoration will be the reward.

Smoky Mountain Autumn

FLOWER

Before any plants get relocated, their new home must be prepared. Today I cleared weeds and trimmed herbs in the former bunny yard. Then I put down all the  cardboard I have been collecting to serve as a barrier between the ground and the fabric pots.

I also hooked one of the two labels for each plant to be moved onto the handles of a fabric pot. I placed the fabric pots and plant labels into paper bags for different gardens, so I can easily put the labels on the actual plants.

The crew will check to see if the plant label matches the pot label before moving it inside the fence.

I checked each garden this evening and found some plants that I had forgotten were there. These names must be added to area lists and labels will be made. Unfortunately, I also discovered a whole row that has disappeared. I will dig a bit to be sure they are truly gone in the morning.  These are old plants near the driveway which are easily accessible to deer from the woods

These disappearances confirmed that the moving is necessary. Once all “deer food” is safe inside the fence, I can then care for the victims and find new homes that do not have a herd of hungry deer.

I previously dug sedums and put them in pots on the deck bridge to the entrance. The deer found them and have trimmed them. Some pots were even pushed over and broken.

This behavior shows how hungry and desperate the herd is. Fawns learn what to eat from smelling their mother’s breath. I have had deer eating here since 2018, so seven generations have been trained to eat daylilies, sedums, Solomon’s seal, Pineapple lilies, tiger lilies, lily of the valley, Stokes aster Peachie’s Pick, butterfly weed and gladiolus blooms. Nature always wins. I am not mad about this. Nature must win. That is how it should be. My role is to remove artificial food sources. Discouragement techniques no longer work because of the drought, herd size and habitat loss due to surrounding development.

Mr. Flower saw some of the herd peeking from the forests’ edge this morning. I think they were wondering who that lady was in their produce section.

This is alot of work, but I feel it is the right thing to do for the plants and the herd. They need to disperse and forage on native plants.

FLOWER on the move

More changes are coming. No shift stands alone. Even if you are in control of the first move, you have less control of the effects. Sometimes I refer to this as a cascade.

The Butterfly Effect is real. Although it sounds ridiculous that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a tornado, a small shift in one part of a system can result in a large change elsewhere.

I have witnessed this over and over. I know to expect the unexpected. Any instability can cause chaos eventually.  A subtle, barely noticeable change can turn drastic over time.

So being the proactive person that I am, I respond with what I call “turtle mode.” I get very quiet and still and hide while peeking out to see what happens. Until I have a grasp of the new situation, I try to just be an observer. This may seem reactive, but why fight the tide as it comes in?

I will be moving most of my plant collection next week, Mr. Flower will officially retire and the house next door in our neighborhood of three is for sale. That sounds like a tornado to me!

FLOW in her shell

This amazing piece is near the entrance of the Palm Springs Art Museum. It was designed by Anthony James in 2020.

The rhombicosidodecahedron is made of steel, specialized glass and LED lights.

My hypothesis is that the glass is one-way glass with mirrors on the inside surfaces. The reflected shapes inside repeat to infinity.

Mesmerizing!

The name was too hard for me to say, so I called it the Buckyball Mirror Ball.

FLOW

I have been in a writer’s funk since I put away the book about the Pearson Women. There has been some guilt about it. Now that I am my own Mama Bear, I am better about doing what is best for me even when guilt is involved. I am working on getting strong again after my three hip replacements in two years. I am proud of the results so far.

On Sunday, my bookclub discussed Kristin Hannah’s book THE WOMEN. We had enlightening discussions about the many events involving the main character, a Vietnam surgical nurse, and her two best friends, her parents and several love interests. Reading this book involving a controversial war was an emotional rollercoaster, but we were all glad we had pushed through and read it.

At the end of our discussion, I mentioned what I call ‘time circles.’  There a few were examples of this phenomena in the book.

This got me thinking about a strange event that occurred while I was cleaning out my mom’s house on Enwood.

I noticed two books in the office trash can. I wondered why my sister had thrown them away.  There were stacks of books everwhere. Why these two?

When I asked her about it, she did not know anything about the books. We pulled them out of the waste basket. Neither of us recalled having ever seen these two old  books.

Of course I thought it was a sign from Daddy. I pulled them out of the trash and read them both. One was a book about Vietnam, the other was a book about marriage.

I was disappointed. They seemed like old- fashioned propaganda from the 1960’s. The mystery of those books has stuck with me. I had no clue what either had to do with me…

UNTIL TODAY

You will have to wait for the circle’s completion.  Sometimes you find the end of a circle and sometimes you find a beginning. I call the beginning sign a ‘ heads up.’ The two books I found two years ago were a ‘heads up’ for events happening now. WOW!

I am going on a trip. I may blog, but this circle must wait. It will need my full attention when I return. Rest assured that I will hitting this ‘time circle’ hard when I get back.

There it is. That researcher’s excitement that I have been missing. Hooray!

Thanks Daddy

FLOW

I am back home for a weekend. I am back to purge the un-needed and fix the broken and play PIBWIB. (put it back where it belongs). I have run out of clean clothes in less than 48 hours. So I had to decend the steps into the dark belly of the house.

I have never liked the narrow laundry room. The adjoining darkest corner room houses boxes from Rose’s college apartment. Kitchen supplies, linens and furniture for a future on-hold. I won’t share a photo of that mess.

I went to my shop which still has the big plants I could not move out on my last visit. I needed a short piece of chain to repair a hanging solar light beside the entrance to the pebble patio with no furniture and a few weeds. No photo.

I save scraps of anything that might be useful later,  thus there are many junk drawers and boxes of craft supplies. I knew just where to find scrap chain and wire. I will not share photos of that untidy chaos either.

I have done hours of trimming in the gardens. I left piles for Mr. Flower to haul to the gully. The beds look neater…for now. No before photos will make the blog. Only staged after pictures. The whole truth never makes the cut. Only the successes. Is this misleading?

I will share only the lovely scenes. You will see only the bright blooms and thriving plants. No one cares to see the weeds and debris in piles. No one wants to witness the ugly part of gardening…and life.

Is leaving out the whole truth a lie? Is omission really a sin?

That’s where my head is right now, after abandoning my writing project. The research I spent months doing uncovered the reality of squabbles and sadness and elopements and a suicide that were never shared.

The unpretty pasts of folks I never met. The  keeping of their secrets is a bit haunting. That’s what I was thinking about as I preened my gardens to make them pristine and picture-worthy. Only share what is presentable and hide the rest.

We all want our best selves to be seen and remembered. It’s only natural. What would be gained by exposing the ugly? They took things to their graves for their own reasons.

Tidying up their lives to make them presentable was like me cleaning up a flower bed for a photo shoot.  Somethings are best left unsaid and unseen…and yet.

FLOW