Wonderful Husband, Beautiful Family�

2002-01-10

My husband did an extraordinary job of picking out books for me this Christmas. He bought me one on bugs in the garden. It was writen from the point of view that you can't kill them all, you have to let them balance eachother out. A point of view that I've held since I really started to have a garden. Remember folks, bugs develop a resistance to poisons much more quickly than we do. If you've spread enough poison around your home to kill all the bugs, you've probably already doomed yourself along with them.

The other book he got was called "Renoir's Garden". I would never have bought it for myself, even if I'd looked at it. But I am enjoying reading it very much. Of course, now I want to live on the nine acre olive orchard that Renoir did, but that was to be expected. More room to plant things. Or maybe just watch things grow.

My dream is a very small house on a very large piece of property. Part of it would be my garden, and the rest a wildlife refuge.

Things are sprouting. I have my first sunflower seed coming up. I took the hint and started to plant.

I planted sweet peas. I don't like the smell of sweet peas, but the flowers are so simple and easy to paint. Smooth gradations of color, from dark to light. When I try to paint flowers with a profusion of petals, I just get lost. Besides, they're one of my Mom's favorite flowers. If I'm really lucky, they'll still be blooming around Mother's Day. If not, maybe I can get a better painting out of myself and the flowers.

Youngest Sister is probably going to Mom's this weekend. I was planning on going over sometime, too. So I'll go over; commiserate over the sister who has lost her way; put more plants in the wreath I made for Mom; and maybe walk around the block with the kids for a while so that Mom and Youngest Sister can have some peace for a few minutes. I get to spend some time with my nieces and nephew. They get the respite of a few minutes of no demands on their time. To me, that seems like a win-win.

I have a sister that's lost her way. I'm sorry for the loss of her in my life. I miss the person I know she can be.

But I will be damned if I will let that ruin the rest of my family. I will be happy that they are there, they are who they are, and I get to love them.

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