To Thank a House

 

As September draws to a close, I find myself preparing the outside of the house for winter: sweeping a carpet of leaves off the deck, pruning the wire vine back, pulling dandelions and nightshade out of the mulch by the back fence. It occurs to me that this work will never be finished: that it moves in a wide, wobbly circle as the seasons change, each transition bringing its own tasks and trials.

In the first downpour of the year, the gutter above the kitchen window overflowed in great sheets of water into the stairwell below, and I had to pull out fistful after fistful of grit to clear it out, blind with rain and cold water funneling down my shirt front.

If this was not my house, I wouldn't have laughed. Because it is my house, I did.

And so, I remain charmed by this little house, with its cobbled-together, chicken coop roots. Each time I dig up a weed or sweep the front walk or pull English ivy off the light pole, I imagine that I am saying thank you. And in the early mornings when the weather grows cold, as I lie in bed and hear the faint click and whoosh as the heater turns on, it's as if the house is saying right back: you're welcome.

Happy Wednesday, friends.

<3

Cory

Checking In

 

This last week, I weeded my front yard. My current projects are both secret and all-consuming - work that somehow makes me exhausted and furious and intensely fulfilled at the same time, work that has kept me frustratingly absent from this space - but in between the long days and late nights, I've been driven outside. Mostly to chisel dead grass from the cracks in the sidewalk, but also to get to know this little piece of land around our home.

So lately, the internet, the local nursery, and the neighborhood landscape have been my guide to the unfamiliar language of plants: the cost of a palm; the proper plants for shade; the name of the climbing vine that has taken over the front fence. The neighbor gives us a bag of ripe figs in a brown paper bag and they spoil on our kitchen counter in a day or two. Each day the climbing rose shakes loose a fresh carpet of petals to rot on our front step, and each night the neighbor's cat comes by and uproots our little yellow decorative cactus from its pot. It occurs to me that there is a deep and stubborn wilderness to even the most cultivated of land.

And yet, there is a satisfaction in putting things in order: trimming the hedge, sweeping the sidewalk, pulling the bindweed from the side yard. No matter what I do, entropy will continue its slow-growing sprawl across this particular patch of earth, but perhaps that's the charm of it: the constant growth and re-imagining of space; the reminder of a world untamed by human laws and structures. The opportunity to shape something beautiful from that wilderness, if only for a moment.

Happy Friday, friends.
<3
Cory