New Year, New Pot

I'm back!

Did you wonder where I had gone?

Well, offline actually. My computer of five years crashed in early December, forcing me to leave my poor little baby blog out in the cold for most of the month since we were going out of town for Christmas and wouldn't be able to focus on buying a new computer until we got back.

And now I'm back.

Don't worry, I still love you.  

I've been thinking about you quite a bit. Yes you. My wonderful readers. I've been composing new posts in my brain while driving the 24 hours to Florida with my family in our cram packed minivan, tossing around new ideas for topics to explore in the new year while eating tons of bad food full of caloric emptiness at family gatherings, feeling a little frustrated that I couldn't put all of my Christmas inspiration into written form for you as I experienced it firsthand, and all around just missing the wonderful creative fulfillment I've found in parenting The Greenest Version.

So I'm back in the groove and feeling great about what this year might hold. I know it's going to be good. I'm happy to have celebrated the close of the old year in the place that I've always called home. 

Florida.

Funny thing, that, because it doesn't feel like home anymore. I was shocked to realize this after being there for a few days, because in the summer when I was there it still did feel like the place that had always fit me. Not anymore. So I thought it quite apropos to say goodbye to 2010 in a tangible goodbye place in my life. I really got the sense of leaving the past behind me as we drove down the main drag for the last time in the town both Derek and I grew up in, Merritt Island.

My favorite chapter in the Bible, Philippians 3, states "not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal..."
(vs.12-14)

And that's pretty much how I feel about both the past and the future right now. I needed to go to Florida not just to see loved ones, but to realize how much I no longer belong there full time and I needed to realize the simple truth of being transplanted. I'm looking forward to the future. I'm ready for all that God has for my family. I'm ready to learn and grow, I'm ready to stretch, to trust, and to learn to see what I'm really looking at when I venture out into the world each day. I'm ready to continue to become who I was meant to be.

I'm pressing on.

I'm like a plant that switched pots. The old Florida pot was nice and comfy and then the new Tulsa one seemed so big, sophisticated and cold. But now, I have grown used to my perimeters in the new pot and the old one just won't do. I am now realizing the space I have to stretch and dream and grow in this new life I've been given, the wide open space that I never seemed to have in the old pot.

So I look forward to filling out my pot this year. I'm starting to love this particular mix of dirt I'm living in. I look forward to more growth, more faith, more blossom and beauty, new friendships, maybe some college classes, healthy weight loss, decorating my home and making it fun and funky and of course, surprises. I look forward to all the surprises, the rapid-fire curve balls that life is known to throw without fail.  

Who knows, maybe Derek and I will even host a community group for our church this fall in our home. It's a secret dream of mine. I think we'd be good at it.

As I write this on my brand new, super cool, smarter than me laptop, our new puppy is racing around on the carpet at my feet. He's full of pent up energy from being in his crate for a little too long and then being put outside where it is quite cold. It has made him hyperactive and frisky. He's doing laps. Around and around the room he races, so excited he can't contain himself, and every now and then he lets loose with a flying leap.

I feel the same way about this new year.

Wildly excited.

Join me, won't you?

Overnight Pothead

I am so excited about all the huge free pots Derek scored from the landscaping company at the next door neighbor's house this weekend! Some of them are huge.

We live up on a hill here in Tulsa and I haven't been able to grow much in the ground aside from green beans and a teensy bit of unhappy basil because our soil is mostly clay. Even the green beans seemed like they weren't thrilled. I was so excited about gardening in a full four-season climate when we moved here from Florida and then when the soil proved to need much doctoring that I wasn't willing to pay for since we are renting this house, I decided I'd have a container garden next spring. But I have quite a large gardening appetite and knew I'd have to find those many containers at a garage sale or in Home Depot's dumpster or somewhere cheap or better yet, free. When I noticed our next door neighbor Jeremy planting a bunch of crepe myrtles and other large plants and flowers this weekend by way of a landscaping company my eyeballs immediately lit upon the massive stack of various sizes of black heavy duty plastic pots and tubs.

I sent Derek over to do my dirty work. He came back with a smile and a stack of about eight massive black tubs. Score!

Now I know black plastic is not the most aesthetically pleasing material in the world in which to garden with, but let's face it. It does the job. So until I am an independently wealthy millionaire who can afford to purchase fifty amazing artisan handcrafted mosaic masterpieces in which to house my vegetables and herbs, I shall be happy with what God has so obviously dropped out of the sky on my head.

Now they are all stacked up in my garage and since I'm still a bit under the weather from this cold, I have nothing better to do today than to take care of my daughter, who is also sick, and run around plotting what I shall start growing immediately. I have already called Derek at work three times and it's not even 11:30 yet. Albeit, one of those times was to tell him of the brilliant epiphany I had at around 8:30am to slipcover our nasty couches, but I'm pretty sure I squeezed in some gardener talk too.

Now, to figure out what I can actually grow during the winter seasons. Hopefully, there will be something, else I might have to attempt being the first gardener ever who grew tomatoes in snow.

Is there any better drug than gardening? Not for this overnight pothead.

Wish me luck.

In the Garden

I am daydreaming about gardens lately.

Having just moved to Oklahoma where there is actually a real winter, after living in Florida for most of my life, I am prancing around in utter excitement for the anticipation of a real live spring! Winter has been nice, but spring oh spring, I can hardly wait for all the green...

I have been planning my spring garden the last few weeks. Well, I may as well be honest; I've been planning my spring garden since pretty much the second I ripped my old one out in Florida in September of last year. I can't help it - I love gardening! There is something so profound, so spiritual and enlightening, so philosophical and energizing about being a part of the process of Creation. I love the act of planting a seed in the soil with the knowledge that it must die there a quarter of an inch under the dirt's surface, in the dark, and only centimeters away from it's rebirth. I love the sight of tiny seedlings unfurling themselves slowly and sleepily from the ground and reaching their tiny tips toward the sun. I am picturing myself running my fingers over the tops of the tips of these baby plants, something I always do when they have sprouted - it feels as though I'm running my fingers through my garden's fuzzy baby scalp.

I love the process of growth, which involves thinning plants that are weak, cultivating the stems and branches that seem to be most productive and healthy, and pruning those that aren't. It is a wonderful and humbling partnership of working alongside the ancient magic that was so artistically instilled in Creation. During the spring and summer months I absolutely cannot stay away from my garden and will usually lure any kind of guest we may have outside to show them my adorable little jalapenos or my cheerful morning glories. If you know me well at all, you have most likely been the victim of my enthusiasm and a flashlight for a late night garden tour. Call me sappy, sentimental, overly in tune with my green thumb, but I won't care. I am completely in love with growing things and I do believe there is no known cure.

So of course, it only follows suit that right now the air hockey table has been overcome with seedling flats. It's also only natural that I'm quite protective of my baby lettuces and tiny tomato plants, so I am often checking on them to make sure their soil is moist, they are getting enough light through the window and standing tall in their little dirt-filled cubes.

In thinking all of these gardening thoughts, my contemplation naturally turns itself to more internal channels of growth. I am also taking stock of my soul in these pre-spring weeks. It seems there are things growing in there too, some good and in need of a little more cultivation, and others might need to be taken down a notch or two with some pruning shears. I've noticed lately that I'm a pretty impatient person. I don't know if I ever would have realized how impatient I am had I not started homeschooling Carson. Homeschooling is such a huge sacrifice for most people who do it that I think it probably brings most faults to the surface pretty quick. I've been trying to chill out a bit, let her really learn something and enjoy it before moving on at lightning speed like I normally would. It's been really good and I can tell she feels better understood and loved.

What about you? In the coming weeks, as winter hands the baton to her teammate spring, who seems to be more of a people person, are you analyzing the internal compartments of your life? I challenge you to do so. Lift the lid on dusty boxes in your heart and take stock. Find good reason, in the season of winter, to plan enthusiastically for all the green that is to come. Let the seasons of your life align themselves peacefully in an order that is beautifully set up by your Creator. Become a gardener in the farthest recesses of your ambitions, stroking into full bloom those most lovely aspirations and severing quickly the habits and weeds that will only hold you captive. A scripture came to mind as I wrote that last sentence: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (Hebrews 12:1)
My garden in the winter is a desperate sight to behold. There is no indication that anything green would ever want to live there. But beyond what can be seen, there are tiny root systems working their way throgh the nutritious loam, that will one day break free of the dark and grow increasingly toward light and productivity. May we work consistently to do the same, ever stretching our roots down deeper into the foundation of a Creator who loves us and made us with a smile on His face, and only stretching up from the dark and into the piercing, life-giving, warm Light.