{"id":19381,"date":"2014-04-04T19:53:14","date_gmt":"2014-04-05T00:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=19381"},"modified":"2014-04-05T12:38:10","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T17:38:10","slug":"weeding-our-gardens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=19381","title":{"rendered":"Weeds in the Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m always on the sunny side of the street, and even told the first therapist I ever saw that I felt like I had sunshine on my shoulder and was pretty happy most of the time. She told me that I succumbed to magical thinking. She didn’t mean it kindly, but the fact of the matter is I think it’s true – still. I am the manifestation of the bumper sticker MAGIC HAPPENS. <\/p>\n

My life ain’t rosy and to quote Langston Hughes, it ain’t been no crystal stair<\/em> either. But then again, as my birthday approaches – another revolution around the sun – I’m beginning to like when it’s not rosy just as much as when it is. I’ve had all the childhood elements of what normally sends people to the therapist’s couch – alcoholic parent, rage-oholic parent, as well as family psychosis, secrets, and cray cray, and I survived it all pretty much unscathed. <\/p>\n

Of course, and then, it felt like I didn’t. My whole body just shut down two years ago and literally my hair fell out and my financial world collapsed and all that I had feared might happen happened. And there I was. <\/p>\n

There is a diagnosis for what I had – it all falls under the umbrella of fear<\/strong>. I can’t tell you what I feared, this blog post couldn’t hold that long a list, but I can tell you a lot of what I’ve feared in my life has come to pass. No kidding. <\/p>\n

So now, almost as a matter of practice<\/em>, I have taken to appreciating the weeds in my garden, the ones I used to furiously pull out and toss. And these weeds are so beautiful in their ordinary way. <\/p>\n

I took a few shots of the weeds in my backyard. There is a vine with tiny purple flowers clinging to the fence and there are a smattering of daisy varieties (daisy fleabane<\/a> pictured here) growing from under the house and in the interstitial space between me and my neighbor. <\/p>\n

The cat’s claw on the back wall was almost eradicated by me – I was going to pay Joe $150 to get rid of it but he never showed up and time passed, and one day I learned to love the vine that threatens to take down brick and mortar (that’s what cat’s claw does). But I gave the wall to the claw – HAVE IT, it’s yours, I told the vine and so as thanks, the vine sent me buttercup flowers this spring. <\/p>\n

\"IMG_6328\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6333\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"IMG_6335\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m always on the sunny side of the street, and even told the first therapist I ever saw that I felt like I had sunshine on my shoulder and was pretty happy most of the time. She told me that I succumbed to magical thinking. She didn’t mean it kindly, but the fact of the matter is I think it’s true – still. I am the manifestation of the bumper sticker MAGIC HAPPENS. My life… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-52B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19381"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19404,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19381\/revisions\/19404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}