The Serendipitous

All the backyard critters are in hiding, as I am.  There are workers tearing up the yard next door with their loud machinery, taking out the bad plumbing and putting in the new.  That perfectly landscaped yard next door has been completely un-landscaped.  And the neighbors, renters like most of us in this Googletown, must have been so disheartened by the disruption that they have left their upholstered living room-like lawn furniture out in the mounding dust and dirt, uncovered and unprotected. I bet they throw it away.


Last night when the team of plumbers finally stopped their noisy man talk and loud work for the day, the animals crept back in - the doves asking for millet, and all the other feathered and furred critters, waiting, while I replenished the sunflower seeds and peanuts.


Ahhh, the juxtaposition of the temporary, the human made, like the plumbing and the landscaping and the yard furniture, to that of Mother Nature, who is constantly reclaiming her place, wherever she can, whenever she can.


Our yard "proper" had nothing in it when we moved in.  The rooftop of the tiny 1926 bungalow was canopied by the precariously heavy branches of two enormous oaks. The backyard was bordered by a variety of singular trees: one struggling eucalyptus, an overgrown avocado, the ancient and dying olive, and a lone long-needled pine. The yard itself was nothing but packed hard dirt with no topsoil.  I have steadily worked the soil. I planted grass in the front yard for the sole purpose of giving the soil something to hold onto. I planted an herb garden and some succulents around the patio in the backyard. Then I watched, and I waited, to see what else in this old downtown yard would come back. The plant life did come back - wisteria, jasmine, ivy, wild grape, morning glories, passion flower vines ... the geraniums, the blackberries, the bird of paradise, three rose bushes, a wispy fern, four different ground covers, several native wildflowers.  And, so came, the Naked Ladies.


Naked Ladies are beautiful-tall-lustrous-rose-pink lilies on  leafless-long-bare stalks that have their day in the sun for a short season in early August. Unlike the gorgeous blue scrub jay, I didn't have to lure it to the yard.  An older neighbor had told me not to plant anything along that side of the front yard, that there were special flowers there. She dug into the earth to show me their bulbs.  It took three years of waiting to see them bloom, all along the fence row. 


It brings me joy, this serendipitous piece of earth that I wait on and tend.
As I grow older, I tend to and wait on my own body, mind, and soul - looking towards a time when it will come into its own season of full serendipity.