familyvalues

As the temperatures swing here, from uncomfortably warm (i had to stop the HVAC from cooling last night, despite it being welcome) to chill (no frost warning yet), i wonder if our average is... average? Probably not. The warm is far too warm.

The "king bloom" of the apple blossoms opened yesterday. The other apples seem quite behind: the shade of the pines makes a difference. Somehow the tree has pollinated in previous years: i hope the bees can make it work this year. Blue berry blossoms are opening and inviting bees as well. I should probably give hand pollination of the paw paw a try.

Yesterday's executive functioning went well, remarkable after a month of flailing a bit. I might be on the edge of figuring out something. I did realize my image of what rest looks like is remarkably dim and fuzzy. For Other People it is the lounge chair by the pool or the ocean. There wasn't much rest in my growing up: the morning coffee my parents shared with each other on the weekend inevitably exploded into an argument as they tried to plan what they were going to do that day, a weird lesson in intimacy, communication and, i realize, rest and doing. For me, i think of when i was really sick as a child and spent the time in bed with scissors and construction paper.

I'm suspicious i rested on Sunday, and it didn't look like rest at some angles. There were lists and check boxes and time boxes. On the other hand, there weren't any intentions that lasted longer than ten minutes or maybe twenty. There was laundry. (The air while filled with pollen is dry. The Bruno bed pads and rags dried so quickly!) There was acceptance i was tired from the physical labor on Saturday.

The small multi-flowered yellow narcissus are still blooming, while the later narcissus in pale butter yellow and white haven't started yet. It has not been a good spring for daffodils -- yet? It's finally time for the native flowers: violets are rioting, the red buds are beginning to shimmer with color. One red bud i had transplanted some years ago on the south berm has blossoms. The volunteer at the other end of the berm seems strangely inert. The surviving dogwoods are opening their white bracts to the sky. I've lost some creeping phlox to a combination of weeds and drought. The spice bush blooms seem to have been lost this year, overwhelmed by the grey-green leaf-out of the invasive autumn olive and possibly their own leaves. The Chickasaw plum had so many flower buds, but i think rain and freezing weather limited the show. A juneberry in the woods by the driveway has a few high blossoms. The one i have planted still waits for the right time: perhaps it still needs a few years.

We have been in "severe" drought since January, the longest since we moved here, and the most severe since a terrible "exceptional" drought in 2007-2008. (None of this like California drought, which was "exceptional" from 2014 to the end of 2016.) No indication of any frost chance for the next ten days, barely any rain.  I've probably wasted all the money i have spent on grass seed.

It was overcast last night so i missed the moon-Venus conjunction and any chance of dim aurora.

I am intending to see some family at lunch today, and to dig and assemble my new raised beds. I hope to get the complicated parts -- assembly, leveling the site, trenching the French drain and adding coarse gravel, a screen, and finer gravel mostly done this weekend. Then i think smaller efforts trundling fill from various sites will be easier.

The Thomasville citrangequat has been ordered; tabs open for two pineapple guavas and a yuzu. I've ordered seeds of goat's rue (Tephrosia virginiana), a native legume with showy flowers, as a nitrogen fixing cover crop. I am imagining adding a few artichokes to act as a cover, too, until the trees fill in. Maybe a lavender.

My performance at work this week was not good, much frittering, and that needs to pull around.

Yesterday was far more peopling than usual: a day of meetings and then went to see my niece play the protagonist in Mean Girls: the High School version -- that goes on forever. (I think it's the full theater version but with softened innuendo.) It might be less painful if someone knew how to set the gain on the mics. My niece and the antagonist both have powerful voices. I wish i liked musicals but recent exposure because of my niece has not improved my opinion of the format.

I continue thinking about my relationship to "doing", and refocused on time not intentionally spent. I've realized by "intention" i have excluded things i will do anyway, which historically included journaling  (although for a number of years that has not been as true as perhaps i need). And meals, and relaxing with Christine. Time dealing with physical irritations and discomfort. Digital irritations: application forced upgrades and restarts.  There are many other things in that category, but i think i generally accept that they exist. The solution isn't adding more overhead -- more decisions about priorities and mucking about with lists -- but allowing for the time in intentions and valuing it.

I'm recognizing there are (at least) two other types of time not intentionally spent: avoiding and escaping. I think once upon a time i was "better" with my avoiding time. When work was so hard for me i believe i spent more time journaling and understanding my feelings, framing my frustrations, and clarifying why i was upset -- and then i could move forward. There were also more of the classic "procrastination" behaviors of doing X instead of Y, which i seem to have subverted in some ways. Now neither of Y or X get done.

I think some of the weight -- disappointment? dissatisfaction? --  i am carrying lately is more about how much time i spend in avoiding and escaping. I may be in a viscous circle where having become more aware of intentional vs avoiding vs escaping time i cannot become unaware. As the avoiding feels increasingly out of my control, my frustration escalates, feeding into the emotional demand to escape. In the past, it seemed i could just escape into one novel, and then feel "reset" and get back to business as normal, but that sense of reset seems far less accessible now. All 11 novels in a series later, still not "reset," rereading a trilogy still not "reset."

Ah yes, another type of time not intentionally spent is distraction, which is possibly a variation on avoiding and escaping, but i think its another class altogether.