Life is what happens when you're busy not paying attention

[captainsblog]

As Eleanor has written about (this afternoon and on other occasions), she's been putting a lot of effort into trimming back foliage in our back yard that's threatening to take over the universe. Five more hours at it today, mainly a stubborn crop of wisteria surrounding our backyard patio (to the point of, literally, tapping me on the shoulder during dinner more than once).

I was out there, too, today- mowing the relatively small area of the back yard that needed it after the weeks of heat and not-rain we've been mostly having, and attacking a somewhat smaller accumulation of wisteria on the bedroom end of the house- but her clear-cutting around the patio made it much more obvious that some things are just gonna happen whether we plan for them or not.

When we moved here almost 16 years ago, the back yard came with a barbecue pit. Nothing connected to gas or other built-in fuel for heatage, so other than a few attempts with charcoal, we've largely ignored it, and even made a brief effort at dismantling it early on (accounting for the missing brick or two you'll see below) before its general oomphiness prevailed upon us.  Once the wisteria, and other massive vegetation, all got cleared away before and during today, it became much more obvious just what's been going on back there lo these past few years:



All of which reminds me of one of my favorite verses from one of our most beloved musicians, Beth Nielsen Chapman. Although she's had a long and successful recording career spanning most of the time we've been married (with some deep sadness when she lost her husband to cancer and a brief scare with it in her own life), this is the first verse of the first song on the first album of hers we discovered:

I was swingin' on the swings when I was a little girl
Tryin' to get a handle on the big, wide world
When I noticed all the grass in the cracks in the concrete
I said, "Where there's a will, there's a way around anything"
Life holds on
Given the slightest chance
For the week and the strong
Life holds on

As do we. With gratitude and love.

Comments

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

Lovely picture, verse, and sentiment. Thanks!