Channeling Eden

I'm currently sitting in my garden whilst my youngest freely runs about innocently terrorizing the dogs and prematurely plucking our tomatoes, or "bapples", in toddler-speak.

He calls them bapples because any round fruit even slightly resembling an apple is, of course, a bapple.


My interventions have minimal and temporary success. With each tiny green bapple presented by my toddler's fingers, I restart the four stages of grief. I go through them relatively quickly now, as I've accepted a certain degree of defeat.

And, I'm simultaneously forced to self refect as I listen to my little imitator sternly scold the pups, "No No, doggie!" for nothing in particular.

Regardless of the on-going grief and introspection, this is my favorite place to be when I'm at Shadow Creek. This tiny Eden was why we chose to live here (well, that and the fact that the landlords were willing to rent to us, a whole other blog).



When we saw the lush landscape of trees perched behind our house-to-be, concealing the modern world, we knew we were home.


So, as I said, this lttle garden is now my favorite perch, but it didn't start out that way.








When we first moved in, our small yard was a huge, oddly shaped, thorny mess.

We referred to it as our East meets West jungle of, "holy Moses, what is that?!?"










We knew that, if we put some love into it, we could find the beauty hiding back there.

It only took a few garden tools (rake, shovel, rototiller, hacksaw, machete...),

a little tenacity (muscle, patience, bravery, rage, night-terrors...),

and some ingenuity (bribing the garbage men, child labor...),





and before much time at all

(except for the years stolen off our lives),

we had the beginnings of our sweet Eden...

While her progress is slow (thanks to that gopher from the underworld and his minions, the snails),

she is starting to give back some of the love.

And we are so grateful!

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