Summer Is Waiting

Spring is always marked by a flurry of activity. On the garden front this year, I dug up five, full-grown, but unhappy azaleas and moved them to more auspicious locations. Since chopping a bunch of their buggy branches off to consolidate their energy, I’m seeing tiny new leaves beginning to appear. They’re till a bit buggy, but so far so good. As usual, I also ran up some lovely long cash register receipts at the local nursery. That meant rushing home to till new ground and get them planted before the summer heat.

We’re blessed with a sprinkler system at this house (the first time I’ve ever had this luxury), but because my planting beds are reserved to drip zones, I have to connect each new transplant to it one at a time. This measure-twice-and-cut-once process with quarter-inch tubing leads to sore thumbs as I jam each new emitter into the half-inch supply lines. (I did get smart this year add drip tubing in plots ear-marked for annuals, making individual connections unnecessary in those areas.)

Then, of course, it’s been more than two years since the first layer of mulch was laid, so it’s time to cover every square inch of it—make that every square yard because of the ridiculously number of flower beds I asked for—with fresh top-dressing. I slit bag after bag, hauling, dumping, shoveling, spreading . . . (Pass the Advil please).

Tilling Words Too

It’s been just as busy on the writing front. Spring found me hunched over my laptop laboring over final edits for my new devotional coming out soon—A Place for Me in God’s Tent. These edits made it necessary to make further edits (yes, I know I said the others were “final” but they weren’t). Those edits meant going back and changing what came before, which meant altering how I presented what came after, which meant . . . 

Let me just say, editing a book (or article or story) is much like renovating a house. You start with this little-bitty hole in the wall because you want to move a light switch, but the hole reveals some issue with the structure behind it, so you have to open up the whole wall, which means you have to change the flooring because somebody dropped a nail on the hardwood floor and someone else stepped on it and ground it into the boards, which required repainting the entire room . . . Need I go on?

But Ah! It’s Summer.

Spring is over now and summer brings with it a bit of a pause. It’s time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all that labor. I’m still getting mulch down, bed by bed and bag by bag, but the heavy digging, ripping, and tilling are over until fall. Summer is waiting time. Waiting for the next set of flowers to bloom. Waiting for those promising baby tomatoes dangling from the plant my neighbor gave me to grow and turn red. Waiting in the shade for the next breeze to come off the field behind the house.

Summer is waiting time for the book, too. It’s gone back to the publisher for all those revisions I sent them after hours of editing. There will be another flush of activity when the galleys return to be scrutinized, but for now, I wait—for the next bloom, for the next step in publishing, for my husband to bring a cold drink out to the patio . . . Okay, sometimes I get that myself.

Summer is waiting in another way. It’s waiting for me to come out and play. Waiting for me to inhale the rich aroma coming from those roses I chose and pruned so carefully. Waiting for me to go on another hike with my husband. Waiting for me to shift my brain from the administrative side of writing back to the creative. Waiting for the grandkids to come back and “bother” me with joy.

What are you waiting for this summer? Take time to enjoy it, ‘cause summer is waiting.