Instructions for the Proper Care and Feeding of Grumpy Robins

Instructions for the Proper Care and Feeding of Grumpy *Robins

(*for most anyone, actually. Put your own name here if you’d like)

If you see me one day, and I seem out of sorts.

Ask me.

Ask me this.

“Have you been outside lately? Without a list, without an agenda? When was the last time you wandered through your yard for the joy of it?

When I start to protest, because I probably will, because of all the things I think I need to do, stop me. Say “Yes, dear heart. Of course there is an endless amount of work you could do inside. Also outside. Take your blackberry patch, for example. Endless! But those berries will be there tomorrow, and you can do another clearing then. But now? Bless them. Leave them. That is not your task for this hour. Right now, you must go out and play in the dirt.”

Hand me my shovel. My garden gloves. Rip open the bags of compost that have been languishing at the side of the house. Send me out to my other compost pile, the one at the back of the yard. Help me turn it over. We can search for worms. Because there are plants to plant, living things that need a new home, the ones that I found on the discount table at the nursery. The $2.00 shrubs. The $.50 perennials.

Remind me to be a little careful, because there undoubtedly will be chunks of glass, bits of broken pottery, and rusty nails where I dig, where the new plants will live. Thankfully, the other plants who reside there haven’t seemed to mind much; they are flourishing, back in that part of the yard that apparently used to be the town’s dump. It’s been awhile since anybody loved this little part of the earth. Years for sure. Possibly decades. Maybe a century? Go love it now, you tell me.

Tell me to talk to the plants. To welcome them.  To say,

“Thank you for your life and for sharing it with us. You are most welcome here. All of us, your fellow plants and I, are so happy to have you.”

(It seems silly not to talk to them; they are so clearly aware, so beautifully alive, so full of their own songs.)

Then encourage me to look around. To see the plums on the trees, the purple ones, the red ones. Hand me a bowl. Have me pick some. Have me pick enough to share. There are so many that they are falling to the ground. Because even though I didn’t plant those trees, didn’t prune them, or nurture them (or talk to them), they are heavy laden with fruit. They are thriving.

Also, it’s a good time to plant a few bulbs, you tell me. It’s the season. My sweet friend gave me bags for my birthday. Lots of daffodils, which the deer don’t eat. Now is the perfect time to get them in the ground.

Much to do out there, you say, as you push me out the door, close it gently behind me. But now it doesn’t feel like work. It’s not a chore, to go into the yard and pick fruit and dig holes and get down on my knees, to make my offering,  my prayer.

When it starts to get dark, call me in again. Tell me “Love, it’s time to come in now.”

You know I won’t want to. You know I’ll want to stay out. The crickets are chirping. The sun is just going down. The night noises begin.

When I do come in, I will be myself again. I will have forgotten all the things that were weighing on me before. I will thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Then we will sit at the kitchen table and savor the plums: so juicy, so sweet.