{"id":41643,"date":"2019-07-14T11:45:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-14T18:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=41643"},"modified":"2019-07-14T11:49:11","modified_gmt":"2019-07-14T18:49:11","slug":"walls-vegetation-and-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/14\/walls-vegetation-and-motivation\/","title":{"rendered":"Walls, vegetation, and motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day last week, I couldn’t bear being inside my house or inside my own skin. Normally, solitude is joy, but there are certain days — and I’ve had a lot of them, this gloomy spring and summer.<\/p>\n

I wish I could tell you I get through such times by meditating or some other spiritual practice worthy of a true hermit. Ha. Truth is, at the itchiest of those moments the only cure is to escape from the hermitage. And usually to shop.<\/p>\n

Oh, not for designer shoes or fancy clothes, unless I can get them from a thrift store. Anything I have reason to buy will do — past-date groceries at the liquidation mart, a wastebasket at Walmart, any find from a garage sale. The mere act of leaving the house and going somewhere where there are abundant, colorful, inexpensive, fun, creative choices always picks me up.<\/p>\n

So does outdoor work, but the soggy spring and summer we’ve had has left me unmotivated. <\/p>\n

This summer’s one-and-only real project was to be a rock wall\/rock garden covering the long, low bank in front of the house. This bank:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Clear back in the depths of last winter I told The Wandering Monk to save a spot in his schedule for wall\/rock garden building, “Early. In May, as soon as weather permits.” However, May didn’t permit. June didn’t permit. Early July didn’t permit. Or rather, I lost my oomph somewhere in the spring and haven’t been able to get it back thanks to rain, but mostly to inertia.<\/p>\n

Then that itchy-mood day came last week. I ended up serendipitously combining two curatives — I shopped and thus got myself project-motivated. That day, lo and behold, the place that passes for our local garden center was having a CLEARANCE CLEARANCE CLEARANCE sale on all plants.<\/p>\n

You know I’m a black-thumb person when it comes to growing plants. Shamefully terrible at it. But since the house is down to finishing details, I’m slowly embarking on the project of getting rid of every last damn bit of lawn on the house side of the street. I’ll still keep grass on the lot across the road because that’s going to be my little private park (probably about the time I get too old to totter over to enjoy it), but eventually every bit of land around the house will be covered with:<\/p>\n