Ten.Nine Hundred & Ninety

1. I should have gotten up earlier. I need coffee before I go out there again.

2. Today I will just try Sprouts. The coffee is done. I will go now.

3. No line outside the door yet. Good. Maybe it will be normal in here.

4. No bread, no eggs, no dairy. Unless you want to spend $14 on a pound of raw butter or raw milk. Why do people keep getting so close?

5. So much.

6. I take a mug of hot tea and the latest issue of Garden & Gun to the front porch and sit in the sun. I think of how she told me that I picked the hardest genre to want to break into. It was not what I expected her to say. And she might have been right. But I also know that I stopped trying after that day.

7. “As we begin the third decade of the twenty-first century, we face unimaginable challenges of stewardship. From climate to democracy, from civility to equality, the infrastructure of our lives is wearing thin; certainty about the future is as difficult to glimpse sometimes as a firefly in the very first whispers of twilight. This issue calls us to cherish what is right before us and to secure its fate as best we can for as long as we can.nobleIt’s a noble, achievable mission—and too few things in life are both noble and doable.” - Jon Meacham, “Southern Stand,” Garden & Gun

8. It’s just stress.

9. I change my clothes and head out to the backyard. Headphones in my ears. I transplant the mint and rosemary. I grab the inserts from the wine shipment and take them out back, fill them with dirt. I find the seeds from my old garden. I fill the soil with okra and tomatoes and corn and peas. I decide that the far corner might be best for lettuce. It’s shallow and I can’t dig, but I can probably get some greens to grow there.

10. Virtual happy hour with the ladies from the house. It’s good to hear their voices and their laughs. But it’s not the same, it’s not the same.

11. Nothing will be the same and that’s okay. Isn’t it?