Adjustment

Mark, that great stabilizing and equalizing force in my life, the most consistent, calming and confirming husband a woman could dream of, takes a lot of pictures of plants. He can take 20 pictures of the same plant with different apertures, light, focus, until he gets what he wants. He rarely deletes what he doesn't want, however, leaving me with a folder labeled May 2009, insert-your-favorite-nature-spot-here and 53 pictures of the same bleeping Solomon seal from 9 angles.

At least it's digital, right? Before it used to be box after $20 box of prints. But when I look under May 2009 to find pictures of the defining moment of the month, I see file folders of how Mark has spent his lunch hour and early weekend morning bike rides - Arie Crown, Braidwood Savana, I&M Canal, Maple Lake, O'Hara Woods, Ted Stone, Warrenville Grove and West DuPage Woods. There is a folder for Mother's Day and a smattering of dumped, un-foldered photos that I took of my Roots&Shoots group and science lab. But not one picture of the mostly dead tree. Or the plants we are moving underneath it.

Not one shot of a wild geranium or bellflower lovingly transplanted from the woods around my childhood home when my parents moved 12 years ago. Instead, I found this fallen no swimming sign, which I hope is a signal of the future of our backyard now that the rain garden is in. We moved many a wild geranium, hyacinth and bellflower in the past week. I'm feverishly painting one wall of the garage in order to move the scorned and despised non-native hostas and ferns to the only shady place left in our yard. All the native stuff we can salvage has been moved and transplanted to other areas of the yard, but it looks dreadful. And I've spread nearly 2 cubic yards of mulch to protect what we've put in.

I just hope the apricot's enormous stump is ground down soon. That's one image I'd like to be rid of. And once the sanctioned and native Hill's Oak we plant nearby is in the ground, I'll believe our life is moving forward. It's the limbo I can't stand.