There's the way a garden looks, say, in a picture and then there's the way it feels. We use more senses than we think we do at a given time. The goofy birds that will never let you photograph them playing. The swaying breeze. The way the cool air pools around your feet in certain areas or how the stepping stones stay warm after dark. The herbaceous, clean smell. The background hum of bees. Damp dirt. None of it photographs well. But it all weaves together into a certain ethos.

Every garden I've ever planted has been at least 50% chaos, but it gets there gradually. From sleeping seed pod to high summer, my garden and I take steps toward unrestrained chaos one or two at a time until it is a full gallop. I'd be lying if I said anything other than I love it. It makes me feel like I'm part magician, part mad scientist. Manicured, well behaved gardens are for someone else.

I have always felt time passing like sand in the wind. Fast and abrasive. But there's something different about this decade. In your twenties you feel the weight of every decision, whether or not to go to college, which degree, which first job for your "career", where to live and put down roots, if/who you marry in the great wave of everyone pairing up, whether you want to start a family young, wait, or skip that. And everything feels like a race to keep up with your peers. It's hard to hold onto what you want and what's important to you. 

This new decade is heavy in a different way. Time still passes like sand in the wind, but now there is a growing pile of time that has accumulated at my feet. Learning to live with the consequences of the choices that my younger self made is a different feeling. The career that didn't work out. The job that called at the wrong time and the one I found on accident. The man I married and the life we've built to this point. The children we chose not to have. The house we bought. The flight school I never went to. The family relationships that I fought to maintain with different levels of success. The friends that I let go their own way and chose not to follow. The friends who became family. The master's degree that I always think about pursuing but keep putting off. The time and energy that I committed capoeira. The years I spent not doing art. The winter I spent reading nothing but gardening books and poetry. 

I'm taking all of this into the next decade. Sometimes I am proud and confident of the direction I'm headed and the pieces I have to build with. Other times, I wonder if I didn't leave something out. And maybe what I left out was an Important Something that will keep me from the life that I want. This is especially true when I realize how disappointed my younger self would be that "all I'm doing" is customer service for a coffee company. That I'm married and live in a suburb of Portland. That I'm not a prolific artist or doing anything with airplanes. If I had to meet my 18 year old self, I'd probably lie to her so that she wouldn't get too depressed to finish high school. So that she would still go to Multnomah and try her best for a life that looks like happiness. And I know that I would have to lie to her about the job, the husband and the house because none of those things were important to her. The only truthful thing that I would be able to say is that "it works out" which is another way of saying "nothing is wasted". 

Today, I feel the scrape of sand in the wind and I hope that the version of me 10 years in the future will treat this present version of me just as kindly. I hope I still believe and have evidence for "nothing being wasted". I'm not at all sure. But I hope I still like myself and my choices enough to say, "it works out". And I hope and I hope.