I had a vision once...

I had a vision once of a garden, roses climbing on a trellis and lilacs and crocus and geranium and parsley invading every corner. Seven years of work and expenses have not filled in the picture. The garden is mostly bare. Too many circumstances conspire to keep the roses from thriving, and the parsley from self-propagating.

I'm fighting too many weeds and too many other factors: the soil is too sandy;  slugs and birds and moles are too hungry.  Even now, at pruning time, when every thing should be dormant, this garden is a patch of ugly weeds, and in a few weeks the blackberry vines will invade anything and everything if not eradicated drastically.

We've come a long way to give up now, I tell myself. No way! That Cecil Brunner Rose will cover the trellis with fragrant tiny pink roses in just a couple of weeks and if I look carefully among the weeds I'll find both the geranium and the parsley needing a bit of help to survive the invasion of beach grass in their spaces.

I feel the same way about my writing.  For years and years, I dreamt of the time when I could leisurely let my thoughts out, one at a time, and each would be a beautiful flower to cultivate, to encourage, to share and rejoice about.

Writing feels exactly the same as cutting down and eradicating weeds in search of a tiny geranium bush that needs to see the light of day.  There is so much stuff that has invaded my brain. Even for a clear moment when something begins to emerge, for that moment, hours of labor have produced so little, such a puny result.  Confidence does not grow in dark corners.

This space will evolve.
Today it is just full of weeds.