Radical Hospitality...Room

I worked in the yard yesterday. Believe it or not, I loved leaves in Nebraska. They fell in the fall and they were beautiful and then they went away.

Leaves in a North Carolina year drop from the fall to the time the oak pollen finally gives way to the new leaf. Major wind storms, ice, snow...they all do their best to dislodge those clingy, brown appendages. They fail. These leaves fall when they are ready. As soon as you rake a bed. The night before you are scheduled to lay pine straw. It's the stuff of nightmares.

But I digress. The hospitality point was making room for spring. The classic image is getting rid of the old and planting new. That's not really how it works. You prune. Old becomes new as it is repurposed into compost or gets a new pairing of annuals. But you have to work it. When neglected, hings quickly lose their shape, their ability to serve their purpose, or their beauty.

Hospitality means making some room. The leaves pretty quickly cover all potential and seem like they will never go away. The art is not to be convinced by what's on the surface of your life that there is no room for other, for different.

It's a never ending job.

I think it is more rewarding than these stupid leaves.