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Today I get my workout in the garden. Countless squats, some lifts, probably some other awkward movement with old lady grunting is in order. I know that there are dozens of pickling cucumbers hiding out there, I saw one peeking out at me.

Lately our youngest dog has been policing the other animals in the house. He's learning what I don't want them to get into, especially the cat, and now takes it as his personal mission to block the cat from accessing what I've forbidden. Useful? You bet. Do I trust him to not indulge himself after blocking others? Absolutely not (yet).

My cat is a craft thief. He likes to come into my work room and act all innocent and when I'm not paying attention he'll scamper out of the room with something in his mouth. He doesn't eat it, it's just for the thrill of theft.

Back to the garden, I need that time today, just me and "doing" without thinking so much. I crave a quiet brain and the silence seems to put things in order. After breathing out recent anger and revulsion I asked "Where is the grief? It should be given space." and like other times in life, it was already felt years ago. It's hard to look back on the indignity of codependency, of continuing to show up despite not being valued (likely not even wanted, let's be real?) and not become defensively angry or project responsibility on to others as if they are masterminds of something.

Nah, the embarrassing thing is that I was the one doing it to myself because I was too afraid of being alone or being on the outside. I had plenty of time to recognize that some relationships are breadcrumbs and if I chose to struggle with that then it's something to learn from, isn't it? I forgot to tend to my flowers, dammit, and those babies sometimes need trimming to fully bloom.

Speaking of which, what a relaxing task, to deadhead flowers like daisies, it reminds me of those visual puzzles I'd play as a kid where you'd guess from a mess of curving, braided, and intertwined lines which one belongs to which, sort out from start to finish, using only your eyes. My flower bushes are a bit wild so each deadhead requires visually tracing down the length of the plant to make sure I'm even trimming the correct one, and then spotting the best potential little baby nodes and cutting above that. Over and over. See how it can make your mind go quiet? I need focus!

Today I will add more soil and mulch to a lot of them because they've grown so tall they want to lazily fall over, but they will pinch their stems if they do that. I actually haven't weeded some areas because I noticed the weeds are the only thing holding up the flowers. There's a metaphor there, keep that in mind at all times, thank you!