Wednesday, May 27, 2009

bad day


I usually don't write about the bad stuff, but I am going to today. It is the end of the school year, and I, like everyone else at Waukazoo school, am cramming six or seven days worth of work into every five and wondering if I will get it all done by the last day, when we all wave goodbye to the busses and collapse in a heap.  I feel this way every year, no matter how I swear that I will plan better, do fewer last minute clay projects (this totally demolishes me every year, but I do not learn), get more sleep, say yes to fewer commitments....the end of May comes, and I am right back here, feeling harried, worried, exhausted and stressed.  Don't get me wrong--there are many gifts each day that come from working hard and keeping those commitments: watching first graders painting their awesome clay fish, putting on a play with third graders which germinated one day a while back when I mentioned, "wouldn't it be fun to turn this story into a play?"), seeing smiles on kid faces enjoying creating in the art room.  So today, just to balance that all out, I guess, I find out that Sarah's second clay zebra has blown to smithereens in the kiln (so did her first one)--and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.  And this was a beautiful zebra, folks.  She worked so hard on it, and she is a great artist. I wish I could just blow myself up instead. She cried when I told her. God. I hate it. I feel like such a failure.
I also had some other negative stuff come my way, no way as severe but enough to stick in my head, and enough to make me feel like a loser.
I hate these days. I do know, however, that I won't have two like this in a row, because I never do, and somewhere inside I know that this is life and it is only my feeble ego that is whining now. Whining loudly. Telling me, who needs this job, anyway? Well, as a matter of fact, I do, and not just for the money.  I still have this idea that if I just try hard enough, all of the bad stuff will somehow vanish.  I know that this is impossible but I just keep trying.

Monday, May 25, 2009

garden stories



Judging from the crowd at Lowe's garden center this weekend, my passion for gardening is shared by a whole lot of people. I love to walk through the rows of flowers and look at the bags of mulch, the cement pavers, the wheelbarrows, the planters and all of the lawn medication designed to cure the ills caused by a long winter. Today, I bought a calla lilly plant and a foxglove to add to my front flower garden. I chose two good spots, dug holes, felt the warm dirt in my hands as I patted it around the stems, and then got out the sprinkler.  New additions for the new year. 
The first thing I learned about planting a garden is that it is an act of faith; a good garden takes years to evolve.  What you do this year probably won't flourish this year. The next thing I learned is that weeds are really a matter of opinion; some of my favorite little guys arrived unbidden by me and have stayed.   The third thing I learned is that, like every other living thing, each plant has a story to tell.
My iris, for example, began with a couple of plants that I bought on the way to my dad's house. There is a place in Renzelaar, Indiana, where you can buy just about any kind of day lilly or iris, and they have a gorgeous koi pond where you can eat your lunch. Anyway, I bought the iris because my grandmother had them in her yard, and then my dad had some of her bulbs in our family garden when I was growing up. I felt that iris were a part of my family history and so a good start for my plot. It took about three years to get one to bloom, and what a joy when they did! I have since added more iris (and day lillies) from my trips to my dad's. They will be blooming in a couple of weeks; I often greet the first one right after the last day of school.
My lilac bush is enormous and also reminds me of my grammy Freda, as do the tuberous begonias I plant every year. She loved them and had them in the bed in the front of her house in Howard City. I remember walking around the yard with her every summer and listening to her stories about those flowers.
Next to my new calla lilly is a huge bleeding heart that was a gift from an old boyfriend. When he told me its' name, he smiled sheepishly.  The only picture I have of him was taken by that plant. It grows bigger and more beautiful every year.  I have three rose bushes, each of them a gift from one of the Marsman girls, students of mine from Waukazoo.  The peonies went in after a trip to the Ann Arbor Arboritum.  The black-eyed susans are my reminder that it is almost time to go back to school. The cone flowers are probably my favorite of all; those orange spiky centers and delicate purple-pink petals are ravishing to me. The Japanese maple started as the tiniest little snippet from my dad's and is now shoulder-high.  The pansies are in honor of my mom. When I was little, it was my job to pick them so that more would bloom. I never look at a pansy without thinking of her.
Hauling the hoses around, pruning branches, weeding, digging, raking, mowing... what joyful work it all is. Days like today, with the breeze blowing, the water pump groaning as the sprinkler arches back and forth, and the hostas unfurling, seem like a long way away from those frigid days of winter.