Unpeeling

It’s springtime at last here in the Hudson Valley, at last. Snowdrops, tulips, iris, and daffodils are breaking through the layer of leaf cover. I took the advice from posters I read last fall not to rake at all—hey, less work is less work!—so there is indeed leaf cover. I quite love it as it is spread evenly and has decomposed faster than it ever did when I tried piling or stuffing leaves into bags. Robins are back, pecking about so my hope is that they are finding bugs and worms below those leaves. It is the season of unpeeling layers.

The wine-red flowers on the maple trees in our street are making me sneeze and our birch and willow are ready to explode with new leaves. Fat buds on my forsythia bush are ready to burst. I planted this from a cutting because a friend told me that the time to prune roses is when forsythia is in bloom, so now I have my own pruning timer at the ready. I am in no way a pro rosarian, just an enthusiastic amateur, so I’ll take all the help I can get.

Our newly expanded back garden is a clay-packed mud pit right now, with puddles that are bird paddling paradise. Once we can fill in the empty lot with topsoil and perhaps a drywell or two, we have plans for trees and flowers, in my “barely controlled chaos” style. In this case the tricky part is that there are some elements in place, tall evergreen trees I don’t want to remove as they serve as bird hangouts and shade that I can’t replace quickly. So, this is, perhaps, something like walking into a chess game where you didn’t make the first moves but now you have to make them work.

Speaking of work.

I have been working on a project for a year and a half. I look forward to sharing more news soon, but for now, I will say that it involves the lives of a couple who arguably changed the way we relate to objects, entwined with episodes from my own life. Much of my work has involved stumbling, trying and failing to visualize a structure for this piece. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night with an insight that I scribble on a note card in cursive I can barely read the following morning. There I am turning the card round and round trying to figure out which way is up. How’s that for a metaphor on writing process… I am truly excited about this story even though it involves serious subjects like death and how we can choose the when and where and how of it.

During the final weeks of winter, I found respite in a wonderful book, recommended by my friend Georgia Court who runs Sarasota 1 Bookstore, where I taught a scene writing workshop this past January. Inside Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders, you will find short essays on cool plants and animals you’ve never heard of, intermingled with snippets of the author’s family life that are somehow uncannily relevant to the living things she writes about. Allow me to say that this book makes for excellent bathroom reading, along with Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. Take a few minutes for yourself, learn a thing, feel smarter, love something beautiful in the world. Then rise up, wash your hands, and step into your day. You can do this.

THANK YOU for reading and I’d love to hear from you! More posts on Fridays at noon. I hope you’ll subscribe (paid subscriptions help support independent writing on Substack!) and share with other readers. A free and open press has never been more important, especially as we experience life under an administration in Washington that is no friend to writers or readers.

You can find out more about my memoirs Perfection and Eva and Eve here and purchase here.

I work privately with memoir writers. You can reach out via my website: juliemetz.com.