I planted raspberry canes in one of the six beds over in my mother in-law’s yard our first summer here (has it really been three years?) but as with everything over there, they didn’t get enough sun. This spring I dug them up and moved them to a very sunny spot on the side of the front porch along with a dozen other new canes and they’re looking great. They remind me that it’s sometimes difficult for some of us to adapt to transplanting. That sometimes it’s hard to find the exact right combination of elements needed to help someone grow and thrive. Sometimes we have to try a lot of things to figure out what doesn‘t work first.

Like me. Since moving from New York to Ohio I have needed to try a lot of things to find what makes me grow and thrive. Some of those things made my roots so dry they couldn’t take in any nutrients at all, and they shaded me so much that I produced no fruit.

But all of this trying has made me dizzy and I feel starved for some sense of success. Looking back at all of this transplanting from idea to idea, I see that I’m a great starter, but lose interest quickly. I fall down on the follow-through. I love to take the spark of an idea and flesh out all of the details in my mind and sometimes on paper, but rarely manage to take the bigger ones through to implementation. I don’t even want to tell you how many domain names I’ve purchased in the last five years, all with nebulous business ideas attached to them.

I want to know why.

I’m tired of waving my hand and dismissing myself with the same old phrases:

I get distracted too easily.

I’m still discovering what I want to do when I grow up.

I don’t think the story I’ve always told myself is the whole story. It goes a lot deeper than that and I think I’m ready to start digging. Our situation demands that I pick up the psychic shovel and push. I don’t want to keep spinning my wheels like this forever and I have this idea that I think is viable and sustainable and that gets me excited every time I open up my spread sheet to add more information to my plan.

But I’m afraid:

That what I want to do is already done by somebody else and so much better (even if it is far away in another city or state).

That financial success will mean spiritual failure.

So I keep opening that spread sheet to add details. I have a list of people I need to call and I put off calling because of that dewy-eyed dreamer thing. But I keep adding names and numbers and my list of questions grows.

Soon.

I tell myself:

Listen…it’s only pizza. It’s not as if you want to open a hotel. It’s a truck with an oven and good, local, seasonal ingredients. It’s a few tables and a cooler and umbrellas. It’s permits and fees and taxes. It’s marketing and making. You can do this. Just do it one bit at a time. Really, now. It’s only pizza.

If I can do it? It means a part-time gig that generates an alternate and much-needed revenue stream for my family and is a nice counterbalance to the computer-intensive writing and graphic design work I also do part-time. It will allow me to participate in the incredible downtown revitalization that’s happening right now in my community.

Oh, and making it truly successful, I’ll get paid to do something I love: feed people.

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I’m currently enjoying the benefits of having so little work last fall that I was able to clean up and amend the garden beds to ready them for spring planting. Sure, back then I didn’t think of it as a benefit, and I thought so even less when we ran out of money a couple of months ago because of that dearth of work. But it’s all a matter of framing, isn’t it? We’re getting back on track with our finances and creating new work paradigms for ourselves, and have the double bonus of being able to eat out of the gardens before we know it.

I mean, seriously, I started my spring planting at the end of February. I’ve never done that before and am amazed at how much is popping out of the soil. After two days of heavy rains, the sun is shining–though briefly, because more storms are rolling in–and the whole world has turned green.

The above photo shows my handy work with trellising for the peas (sugar snap, snow, English shelling) to climb in one of the many garden beds. After the peas are done, I’ll use those rigs for the cucumber varieties I’m planting this year (pickling, lemon, Mexican sour Gherkin, Japanese climbing). They’ll enjoy the benefit of the nitrogen injected soil from the peas and I’ll hopefully make it out the other end of this growing season with many jars of pickles. Oh, how I miss my pickles.

See in the top left corner of that photo? That’s Chris putting the finishing touches on the cold frame he started for me back when we lived at the other house. We really do tend to drag our projects out interminably. Sigh. I’d like to give the wood a cheerful paint job. Maybe a deep red and bright, Mediterranean blue. Check in with me in five years to see if it’s done.

Since I snapped that picture last Friday, the taller trees are still working on their bud formation, but the understory is leafing out and weaving a vibrant green scrim around the edges of the property. In another month or so we’ll be back to feeling more private here. I love this time of year when the landscape begins to ruffle its feathers and fill out after the long winter of gray and brown and all sharp edges.

I planted some green and purple spring bunching onions this year, and seeing their thin stalks pushing through the soil gives me hope. If they can make it through the trial of cold and wet and more cold this Ohio spring has wrought, then so can I. And I am. I definitely am. Even if on this Earth Day, it’s raining and snowing. Snowing! Not sticking, but Maude, there is snow falling out of the sky again.

But, see how those little shoots reach for the light and then take it in and hold it so they’re glowing with the sun’s heartbeat? I’m doing that too. I’m finding the yes when life gives me what I normally identify as a no. Kate Braveheart reminds me that no points me in the direction of a new, better yes.

In recent months, the grip of no has tightened its angry fist around my entire life. Chris and I have had to stop together, and individually, to face the situations we created with work and money, until we could find new action. That’s felt like facing a blank wall that stretches for miles in every direction. Even though I’m terrified of the dark, it helped to turn out the lights, to sit in the black unknowing, facing the wall with our eyes and hearts open until we saw bits of light shining through cracks.

Putting insight into action is easier than I imagined. Sure, I had to speak around the lump of pumping flesh that is my heart lodged in my throat, but I spoke. Work and money are flowing to me now, and from several sources. Chris’ issues with the shop are a little slower moving, but there are more players. Still, they’re taking steps daily and the story is changing.

I’ve grown to think of hope as a noxious weed in the garden of my life, yet one of those plants that if managed properly, has great medicinal value. It thrives when contained, trimmed and used regularly. But its shadow is hopeless/helpless, and that chokes out everything when allowed to grow with abandon.

My big lesson in recent months (years, really, but I wasn’t paying attention) is to stop undervaluing myself. I feel like these peas, growing and reaching for the strings so I can really climb. I know that I’m good at what I do and I deserve to be paid for it. Cat encouraged me along–thank you mddddf. Value can be subjective, and industry standards exist to help keep that in balance. But I’m much more likely to get what I need if I actually say it out loud.

Oh, peas! Hurry up and grow! I need you!

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