{"id":3243,"date":"2022-06-28T05:31:47","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T12:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/?p=3243"},"modified":"2022-06-28T05:31:49","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T12:31:49","slug":"desert-dreaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/2022\/06\/28\/desert-dreaming\/","title":{"rendered":"Desert Dreaming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/th-14.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3245\" width=\"379\" height=\"284\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Plus. Minus. Plus. Minus. Plus. Minus.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All day long, &#8220;What If&#8217;s?&#8221;,  &#8220;Should I&#8217;s?&#8221;, &#8220;Why Not&#8217;s?&#8221; and &#8220;Am I OUt of My Mind?&#8221; cloud my thinking.  Really?  All I want to do is finish painting my hallway.  Thoughts of moving into a new classroom after being retired for five years haunt me.  Yesterday, everything became real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My morning started like any other, although I&#8217;d overslept for a job I don&#8217;t yet have on quiet Monday morning.  To stay on track, each evening, I write down my plan for the next day.  Assigning times and activities, I have a written To-Do List all prepared in case it&#8217;s a day I need to be on auto-pilot.  As a widow, those days pop up and  I need a pre-designed plan to guide me through.  These days, those kind of days don&#8217;t happen too often anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:30 AM.  Water the plants outside.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simple, until it became complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Winterpast sits in the middle of lush gardens.  In the desert, this is selfish and extravagant.  I have my own personal oasis.  Now, I didn&#8217;t plant it.  I maintain it.  In fact, under my watch, several trees have died or been removed.  I&#8217;ve limited the water in some areas, shrinking my green footprint.  My yard remains California green.  This takes a lot of water in the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I own two complicated sprinkler systems that I needed to learn.  Nine stations feeding water to old tubing and even older emitters.  The back station quit last year.  Installing a new box, it still didn&#8217;t work.  I believe I have failing solenoids.  What a curse!  Sounds like a dreaded disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday, when I turned on the back up system, (now leaking in all the wrong places), water didn&#8217;t magically spring to life where it should.  Water in &#8212; No water out  = Big leak underground.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many things I can do well.  I&#8217;m finding I don&#8217;t mind a ladder as long as I&#8217;m not higher than the fourth rung.  I don&#8217;t mind trouble shooting minor car problems.  I can hang doors with the best of them.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, I need to draw the line at digging.  I can no longer be the human mole and dig.  Oliver could help me with this one if only there were a stash of dog bones involved, but the heat gets to him, as well.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Calling Mr. B, Gardener Extraordinaire, I always feel I&#8217;ve failed.  Really?  Why can&#8217;t I fell the tree?  Why can&#8217;t I dig holes in the cement we call desert dirt?  Why can&#8217;t I fix the sprinkler system?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because I am old, frail, and able to pay Mr. B to do it for me.  End of story on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr. B will be arriving tonight and we&#8217;ll start the process of finding out what the heck is happening to the water.  Whatever it takes, whatever the cost.  When Mr. B is done, I&#8217;ll have an automated system in the back yard that waters daily, right on schedule like me.  My solenoids will not longer be failing.  If I need to be up and functioning, my watering system will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, after an extremely frustrating morning in which the haunting of the future took a backseat to the rantings of the present, my phone rang.  An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen begging me to pick up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Hi, this is Janice.  I&#8217;m calling from the little elementary school one mile away from you.  The cute one that you think of often.  The one you applied for.  The one in which we&#8217;ll give you the keys to Room 10.  The one where you&#8217;ll lovingly teach your kiddos from August until May.  That one.  When can we meet?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, the conversation wasn&#8217;t exactly like that (except in my mind).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mrs. Principal would like to meet me next week on a special morning.   Now things are very real.  &#8220;Go Big or Go Home&#8221; VST used to say.  We always went big and I have no intentions of stopping now.  Being Intelligent, Resourceful, Intuitive, Seasoned, 1 part Mary Poppins, and 2 parts Amazing Teacher, the eyes in the back of my head will slay them.  The job is mine to accept or refuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suspect the hauntings of possibilities will be intense today.  That&#8217;s okay, because the more I think, the faster I paint.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay tuned.  The story is starting to getting interesting around here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More tomorrow.<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plus. Minus. Plus. Minus. Plus. Minus. All day long, &#8220;What If&#8217;s?&#8221;, &#8220;Should I&#8217;s?&#8221;, &#8220;Why Not&#8217;s?&#8221; and &#8220;Am I OUt of My Mind?&#8221; cloud my thinking. Really? All I want to do is finish painting my hallway. Thoughts of moving into a new classroom after being retired for five years haunt me. Yesterday, everything became real. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/2022\/06\/28\/desert-dreaming\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Desert Dreaming&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3246,"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243\/revisions\/3246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grievinggardener.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}