To-do List

I should be making a list of where I’m stowing one thing or another and a list of what I want to relocate from this house to the condo in Santa Fe, and a list of what I want to accomplish before leaving here in just another week. That removing anything from here in Texas to the other place, which is already as full as it needs to be, would somehow make this barn/home seem less crowded is at least silly, probably hopeless. Nonetheless, it is the things we do that give us the sense we are clarifying our circumstances and that sometimes make the path seem a little less briar-like. So, as an expression of hope, I think I’ll make these lists.

I have two homes now, although I think I’m trying to leave behind the real home, the one that contains most of my earthly possessions, the one where the garden that I’ve tended for eight years flourishes in the kindness of a Texas spring. Since getting back to rural Leon County at the end of December, I’ve logged more hours in this garden than comprise a standard work week. And while I can see the difference—having whacked away at ornamental grasses, trees and shrubbery, more than 30 rose bushes, and having cleared the beds of spent perennials—I am faced with an abundance of spring growth of the sort that I don’t really want in my beds or in the paths. Thistles abound, along with some kind of sticky fragile trailing WHAT! I don’t know its name. They are joined by clover and oxalis, which I leave alone, and now crab and Bermuda grass, which I do my best to remove. Lately I’ve been head-down with the weeds inside the fenced area, and in mid-Winter I spent quality time in the beds and on the crushed granite approach to the front gate. All of the beds outside the fenced area, including the approach to the front gate, are alive with unwanted spring growth. So before I can say God-speed to this place for the late spring and summer, my sense of duty and beauty demands that I solve the problem of weeds—yes, weeds—that remain.

According to www.theflowerexpert.com, a weed is commonly defined as a plant that grows out of place—a rose can be a weed in a wheat field—and is “competitive, persistent, and pernicious.” It’s hard for me to think of a rose as a weed, but I know people who hate roses, they say because of the thorns. Would that I could just say, thistles, have at it. I’m headed to the mountains. So weeding is on my to-do list. The forecast calls for spring-like weather—well, after all, the calendar says it is spring—great gardening weather. So, with cap on head, tools handy, and an allergic reaction to poison oak on my right forearm and wrist for which I have a prescription, I’ll pay the gardening piper.

Inside this barn/house another piper demands payment. Way too much furniture, paintings that have no place on the wall, all of the treasures that have been drawing my eye for 35 years, beg the question, when is too much too much. Well, it is too much. But I didn’t assemble it in a day, or a year, or a few years, so undoing what has been done will take time and persistence and judicious choices. As I work at dispersing much of what delights me—for sale, all my earthly possessions—I can only try to make sense of it inside the walls of this large place. I’ve already lost part of the battle, however, because many of the rubber-maid tubs I’ve packed are stacked, absent labeling and lists of contents. In earlier fits of organizing, some containers have been sorted and re-sorted, gaining labels and lists in the process.

The list of what I’ll remove to New Mexico can only be relatively simple. I don’t need or want another warehouse 700 miles away from this barn. Only a collector can understand the instincts of another collector. To the uninitiated, collecting can seem just another word for hoarding. That may be true, but I don’t consider myself like the woman on Oprah recently who couldn’t stop bringing things home from the Dollar Store and everywhere else she saw a bargain. Ultimately, an intervention was required—instigated by the three adult children—and the whole family ended up laying out their lives before a live audience. I saw only the before, as I tried to pay attention to the program while waiting for my laptop to be backed up by a computer guy recently. The after came the next day. A friend told me that the difference was amazing. Of course, the woman had to go through some kind of therapy. The story made me think of people who do weird things like collect Tupperware, or worse, disposable food storage containers, or even worse, buy and hide clothing that is too small because they’ve gained weight and have fantasy plans to lose it. Or maybe they can’t pass up found bolts and nuts or let go of string that has already served its initial intended purpose, and...you name it.

We’re an odd lot, aren’t we? I’ve spent way too many hours awake in the middle of the night, mentally working my lists, most of which I don’t remember the next day. Obviously, I’d be a lot better off just getting out of bed and doing something about the lists, even though it’s 1:36 a.m. No weeding for me, however, in the dark hours of early morning, and somehow, packing and labeling the contents of rubber-maid tubs has no allure when I’d rather be sleeping. Well, this is something to work on. And I’m getting in the mood to make lists. I’d choose this over pushing a mop just about any day of the week.

 

To-do List—Normangee, Texas (April 19, 2008)

R. Harold Hollis