Today is hot and windy. Perfect weather for working in the almost sweatshop of a warehouse. Or a road trip. Your choice. Mine has already been made with not just a few regrets. Alas, we live in a world where it is just not 'responsible' to go road tripping merely because the weather demands it. A world in which 'responsible' is one of the highest goals.

To make myself feel better, I went and visited my garden. It's a wild and neglected garden but the sunflowers. Oh the sunflowers! They are now taller than me with stalks thicker than my wrists and leaves larger than my face. I like to sit next to them and listen to their leaves rustle in this wind. I didn't bring my camera or else you would also get to see them. Today, you must use your imagination.

Something funny has happened as I have begun planting plants everywhere...inside my house, in my yard, and in this garden plot near a friends house. My roots are growing with their roots. Like my strawberries, I am sending out runners and connecting with new people from new places. Like so many of my plants, I am having to prune back the things that I send energy into so I do not wear myself out. It is hard to make those decisions though. It hurts. You cut limbs and boughs that you hoped would bear fruit and provide shelter when it was your turn to need it. There is grief in that. I have been a long time in grieving those things. I have been alternately sad and angry...and they never really mention any other stages of grief after that. I hear acceptance comes eventually. I am looking forward to that one.

Roots are funny. I did not choose to put them here...they just started. As I loved and tried my best not to be selfish, I grew. And in growing, I got roots. Weird. Some of those roots were connected to people who left and it was sad to let go. It is hard to start over. It is hard to decide to keep loving new things and letting those roots find new soil. But I have seen that a plant only ever gets as big as its roots. A person is only as kind and good as the amount of love they choose to release into all of the relationships they find. At some point I realized that all of the pruning and transplanting and watering was only worthwhile to endure if I grew from it, turned it into love, and kept letting myself put out roots and runners again and again and again. At some point, I think I decided I want to be a sunflower. That sounds kind of cheesy, but  at least it gives the pain a purpose.