Lessons from the Peach
Dropping excess and asking for help
Every year when the seasons shift, a deep discomfort settles into my bones. At first I thought it was all in my head until I read my journal entries from a year ago. I keep one of those “One line a Day” journals which is amazing to look back on, but sometimes a pain to write in (even though it lives on my nightstand, I forget to enter anything in for days, sometimes weeks, at a time).
Looking back in my journal, I noticed that a similar turmoil hit me right around this time last year. An unsettling. I couldn’t seem to find my natural rhythm. Everything felt a bit too up in the air.
Fast forward to last week and I found myself getting up each morning determined to go about my day base don how i was feeling. No set agenda. No rigid to-do list. Just me, myself, and I.
A lot got done that first week which felt great! Look at what I can do when I trust my instincts, I thought. And yes, a lot was done, but I realized I was still pushing myself too far for too long. Even though I *thought* I was in control, I had unwittingly allowed my productivity monster (and my brain’s tendency to hyper focus on tasks until they are complete, which often means not eating or pausing to use the restroom) get the better of me.
For the first time ever, Arlen and I have turned our attention towards our peach trees and are trying to figure out how to properly care for them. If you’ve been with me for awhile, you’ll probably know that I have a very laissez faire attitude when it comes to gardening. I have quite literally thrown seeds around like confetti, shouting out “Good luck!”, and waiting to see what happened. But after a last year where we received zero peaches due to a late spring frost followed by bug attacks, we thought it might be best to learn how to properly care for them.
Fruiting trees are really incredible in that they have a natural propensity to cull out the excess fruit they bear in their productive years. For may trees, this is often referred to as ‘June Drop’ which is nature’s way of getting rid of an overload of fruit the tree knows it cannot bring all the way to fruition.
However, even with their natural ability to rid itself of excess fruit, peach trees oftentimes still require some assistance in ridding the extra burdens it might not realize it carries. From thin branches overladen with heavy set peaches to entire trees overproducing one year only to burn themselves out and be unable to produce the next, they need a helping hand (or four). They need someone else to come by and gently say, “Hey, I think you are carrying too much. Can I help take some of that pressure from your branches?”
I relate to this so much in that . . . I (very) often fail to realize in what ways I should be asking others for help. Just as I mentioned about my attempts to follow the flow of my body last week, I still managed to fall into the trap of over exerting myself. Of overextending and coming close to burnout.
Taking my cue from the peaches, I am trying to learn how to better ask for help. Out loud and in person, of myself and of those around me.
This looks like . . . my husband coming to me in the afternoons and asking if I’d like to ride my bike around the neighborhood, and me replying Yes. This looks like asking my best friend to help me with writing social media captions because its the part that always makes my brain shut down entirely. This looks like scheduling stretch breaks throughout the day and starting most mornings off with yoga, no matter how many to-dos I have on my list. This looks like setting my phone to “Do not disturb” for most of the day because seeing it light up is enough to throw off whatever I might be doing.
This even looks like allowing for more days in the calendar where nothing definitive gets scheduled because pinning myself down to a task is simply too much. I need room to breathe and to go with the flow, the actual flow, not the “I-must-be-productive-to-prove-my-worth” flow.
Author Events
My first in person event is tonight at Topstitch Studio & Lounge’s brand new space! I am so excited (and nervous) about being in front of a room of people to talk about Emiliana’s story. It’s sure to be a fun event with homemade, gluten free desserts (pistachio financiers from Leigh and sugar “biscuit” sandwiches filled with an orange & tamarind curd from me), scrap busting sewing projects, music, and a special appearance by the book’s illustrator, Jordan Kady.
If you happen to be in the Atlanta area and fancy dropping by, we’d love to have you. We will be hanging out from 6-8 PM at 2969 E Ponce de Leon, Suite 310, Decatur 30030.
In the Garden
We put in our first L-shaped garden bed (!!) last weekend and I managed to purchase enough wood for the next two! In between purchasing the wood and prepping it, I started placing markers for the remaining garden beds in our back lawn, but things felt… off. After conferring with Arlen, we decided that the L-shaped beds—as cool as they were in theory—actually didn’t work with our backyard’s configuration. So we spent one afternoon just staking out ideas. Literally.
Eventually, we landed on a bunch of different sized squares and rectangles, basing everything off of our first L-Shaped bed (which we promptly turned into a large rectangle). I am not sure if you can see in this photo as the stakes and twine are being eaten by all the lemon balm we have, but here is everything mapped out. PS—would anyone care for some lemon balm?
With everything sorted, we replanted one of our pear trees (yay!) which, had we not dug it up this year for this particular renovation, would have borne fruit for us.
Speaking of fruit, this is going to be an incredibly bountiful year for us! Last year, we were incredibly lucky and harvested buckets and buckets of strawberries, but all our other fruits seemed to have taken the year off.
Not only does it look like we will have more strawberries than we will know what to do with this year, but both our peach trees are laden with fruit (we literally thinned hundreds of baby fruits from the tree and still have so many left over!), our granny smith apple is producing for the first time, I counted 20 clusters of grapes on our grape vine, the raspberries and blackberries are coming back with a vengeance, I spotted native, Sawtooth blackberries growing alongside our house, the muscadine vines look thrilled and busy, our blueberries are popping, and we have passion fruit vines sprouting up all over the garden. I’m so excited to see what’s to come!
We may lose some fruits to slugs, birds, and squirrels, and maybe even a rouge deer or rabbit, but I think we have plenty to share this go round. The passion fruit is the only one I am concerned about because every year we have had them decimated by the Gulf Fritillary butterfly. Hopefully that dynamic is evening itself out and we will be left with one or two fruits to enjoy, otherwise, at least we will have a garden filled with beautiful butterflies!
Book Review
This week we have two reviews. The first is from Maria in which she reviews a book that is actually sitting in my own personal TBR pile. The idea of diving into the theater world of NYC in the 1940s had me hooked instantly and the thought that the entire novel is told from the perspective of a 90-year-old woman looking back on her life sealed the deal for me. Plus, that cover—isn’t it brilliant?
I am also taking a stab at writing reviews, dipping my toes into the water so to speak. I have this great fear of doing things incorrectly and will usually research how to achieve something before ever actually starting. But I am trying to leave that mentality behind, especially with things that really have no right or wrong way of approaching them.
So here is my first attempt at writing a review of The Seed Keeper, a book I recently finished and is still very much running through my mind on the daily. I hope you enjoy!
Thanks for being here, dear reader, and listening to my rambling ways,
XOXO