"Gardening is the Best Exercise of All!"

I don't know why I agreed.  A weak moment, perhaps?   It's not as if life is not busy enough with Thistle travels, political involvement,  running an Airbnb and just plain day-to-day life.  But I did hear "yes" come rushing out of my mouth.   I think it might have been my physical therapist's words, newly delivered, "gardening is the best exercise of all.  Keep gardening!"

So here I am, day in and day out, gardening my body into some semblance of fit as I prepare our garden for the Whidbey Island Garden Tour on Saturday, June 17.  As the day draws near,  preparation panic sweeps over me.  I rush to eliminate all weeds, prune all trees and nudge each and every garden corner into a thing I know doesn't exist, but I'm still striving to achieve, perfection.  Ha!  Both my garden and my body resist mightily.

But, despite the work-in-progress nature of a garden, welcome to our Fredley Garden.  Our home and garden are in the city limits of Langley, on Whidbey Island.  We have 1/3 acre of peace and quiet, hidden from neighbors, yet a short walk to town.

This is the front gate, built in our son's wild and playful style. His company, dbBrad, built our home and Brad is our family's creative genius.

First couple of steps through the gate…

A little stroll around the garden…

Our pond…

Please, come again…June 17?

Tickets are now on sale for the tour.  Proceeds from the annual Whidbey Island Garden Tour are donated to selected causes and non-profit organizations that support the improvement, restoration, and maintenance of our common island habitat. Projects that emphasize public space enhancement and education are of particular merit in the eyes of the WIGT Board.

~~~

If you want to be happy for a short time, get drunk;

happy for a long time, fall in love;

happy forever, take up gardening."

~ Arthur Smith

"Whatcha think Ed?"

May was our return home month, having spent much of the winter traveling in the SW.   Yet, here I am, after only two months at home, feeling my feet itch.  What is it about being on the road that is so captivating? And conversely what is it that turns me into a homing pigeon when I’ve been gone for a few months?  Back and forth goes my head and heart.  I want to be home; I want to be on the road; I want to be home; I want to be on the road, and on and on.  One might suggest the word malcontent as fitting.   I prefer, however, to think of myself as a homebody with a wandering gene.  Or am I a wanderer with a homebody gene?  Doesn’t matter.  I love both conditions and yearn for one and then the other.

Right now I might be particularly susceptible to wanting to be on the road because Brad and Ed and Benton are out and about in Thistle, as Brad hikes for GreenTrail Maps in the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon.  Both Yessi and I are home working to fulfill prior commitments.   For me this week it’s Airbnb and jury duty.  Next week's the same. Yessi is honoring  her obligations to bookkeeping and gardening jobs.   So here we are missing our guys and wishing we were traveling too.

When my feet itch I turn to my favorite travel blogs.   Just yesterday I saw this posting about a woman traveling by horseback.  She began in 2005 and has traveled 28,000 miles crisscrossing the U.S. and Canada, with no intention of stopping.  What is it about these wild schemes that captures my imagination?  “Whatcha think Ed?   We could sell Thistle and buy two horses?”   

roadslesstraveled 

Or there’s the biking thing too.  Not like we do it now, with our bikes being carried on Thistle for riding from time-to-time.  No.  I'm talking world-wide self-supported touring.  This couple has biked Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire into Nova Scotia and the Canadian Rockies putting 18,000 miles on their bikes.  They have also toured Italy, plus both the north and south islands of New Zealand.   Sixty miles a day is their commitment.  

Do I dare say it?   “Whatcha think Ed?”

roadslesstraveled 

Or backpacking way into the wilderness…with goats?  I can’t hike any more, but if I could, goats look like fun and useful companions.  

When we were on the Oregon coast this past winter we met a woman who was RVing with two goats and a dog.  She was traveling in an old and shabby vintage RV. The goats, with very long horns, had a stable in the back separated from her living quarters with a picket fence.  They had no back exit.  It was definitely a live together setup.  When she gave me a tour the odor was ripe.   Her plan was to move from one animal rescue spot to another, volunteering along the way.    I'm still kicking myself for not getting a photo and her contact information.

  

The Goat Blog  

Of course, you know how I love donkeys.  We could pack and ride into wonderfully marvelous places with donkeys.     Hum?   That would show that nasty ankle of mine!

Actually we have deep affection for Thistle, and it is challenging enough at times, but I do wish we’d begun adventuring at a younger age so we could be adding adventure-after-adventure to our Thistle Adventure.    I guess we all collect something.  I’ve been able to simplify our lives of stuff, weeding out continuously.  But my imagination, nope, not so much.  My head is jammed with a myriad of ways to experience the world.   

And this is why I love blogs!  I travel along with Leslie and Al in their Travels with HaRVy.  I follow the roadlesstraveled, Bumfuzzle, The Goat and Hiking Frogs. Other blogs come and go.  Spudnik Goes was one that ended as did the 180 Day Road Trip, but while they were active I enjoyed many an hour of armchair travel, dreaming dreams of adventure. 

Then there's boating!   

"Whatcha think Ed?"

~~~


"I bellieve that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great
teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering
instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do."

~ Kay Redfield Jamison 

"Yes, We Have No Bananas"

It's early.  We spent the night in Thistle, parked at Brad and Yessi's home.   Ed's tea and my coffee are in front of us, along with our computers.  Our hotspot is feeding us internet.  The dog cuddles nearby.    But where are the bananas?  Our typical breakfast is a banana each but, Yes, we have no bananas.    We just purchased a huge bunch of lovely yellow bananas yesterday, but Thistle's fruit bowl shows only one wrinkled shrunken orange, an onion, and some stray grapes. 

                                         

                                     

Oh, right!  We were staying at home the night before and the bananas we purchased for our kitchen there needed to be removed  to prepare for our Airbnb guests.   They were shuffled to the little kitchenette in our office, but didn't make it to Thistle's kitchen.  And there you have it...no bananas.

Yep, three kitchens and as many beds and closets and coffee pots.  Enough places and options to feel like the well-heeled Americans we are, yet we're drowning in disarray.  Underwear is always in that other place, where we're not, along with the bananas.  But believe me, it's more than bananas and underwear.   The list is long and seemingly endless...socks, pajamas, Benton's leash, computer charge cords, even garden snips.

Although we're perennial simplifiers, we try to maintain key items in triplicate.  Even then we end up with two at one place, one at another and none at the third.  The organizational details of multiple dwellings challenges us.  We mumble in frustration, "where are the bananas?"

Perhaps we'll figure this out but right now having a home we rent out as an Airbnb; an office, that also serves as our prime bath and sometimes kitchen; and Thistle with kitchen, bath and bed, three miles to the west, our also home, is chaotic.  Beds, bananas, and underwear everywhere and nowhere.  

Fran - breakfast in Thistle

                                                      

~~~

“The nature of life is mess, chaotic, exquisitely beautiful, excruciatingly painful, immensely joy-filled, and unpredictable.” 

~ Debra Moffitt, Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery