Pruning

My garden is looking pretty good this summer, in spite of the weeds. The above picture I took last week, and the zucchini plant pictured is now twice as large (it seems like that would be an exaggeration, but such are the mysteries of gardening). It is now growing 4 zucchinis. The corn and tomatoes in the background have also shot up quite a bit. I spotted 10 green tomatoes on our various plants last night before I had to run inside to avoid a quick rainstorm that led to the most incredible clouds, pictured here:

One crazy technique (“technique” is total hyperbole here) that I’m using this year in our garden is pruning. And although that may sound obvious if you are a gardener or farmer in any capacity, in past years, I’ve just let our garden plants run wild and then I’ve reaped whatever we sowed. It worked out okay. This year, I thought, meh, what would happen if I actually maintained my tomato plants so that they didn’t transform into something resembling a wild cypress shrub or my own frizzy, untamed hair in tropical humidity? A stroke of genius! (A brief, unnecessary reminder that my husband is the farmer, not me.) I spent a few hours (we have a big garden) carefully plucking the offshoots of various plants and taming them into something that could, albeit briefly, grace a cover of Homes & Gardens until the weeds inevitably destroyed my work (so, approximately 4 hours later).

I’m not just pruning the garden for once; I’m also pruning our lives a bit this summer. We cut out some of the other commitments that have us running around from one kid drop-off to the next busy meeting. Summer is usually not a stressful time for me; being a teacher, it’s the time of the year where I get to take a deep breath and recuperate, but I remember having felt so overwhelmed last summer. We had too many things going on, and both my oldest son and myself came down with a really brutal summer flu (I hadn’t even realized that was a thing until it happened) that left us unable to eat or drink anything for days. I’d also had some other health issues last June, all while I was applying for a new job position. While there were many little victories and joys last summer, at the time, it felt like a lot of running around with little focused attention.

Not so this summer: I feel like time actually has slowed a bit and that we can focus on fun family things, the outdoors, and reading. I can also check things off my to-do list that have been sitting there for months. Now the big challenge is convincing myself to use more of this time wisely for my writing and querying because I’ve been doing a very poor job of that this summer. I have a memoir and two other pieces that are in need of pruning, and a science fiction manuscript that needs sunlight and watering, but I’ve neglected all of them for two weeks now. I’m not sure why. Writer’s block? Fear of rejection? Discomfort in dealing with some of the tough subjects I put into writing? I need to focus my attention on them like I did on my tomatoes. Wish me luck! 🙂