We live in a little house on a little hill. Our property is small, too, with no backyard–only a deck–and a small patch of land in the front, where we park our cars. Slivers of earth stretch alongside our home, of which I am grateful. 

Yet there is green outside of most of our windows. Unruly and wondrous branches hang from one tall pine situated on our neighbor’s property, the trunk sprouting next to the invisible property line. Plentiful evergreen trees and shrubs stand across our narrow road as do blossoming deciduous trees–Magnolia and Plum. Birds–Song sparrows, Stellar’s jays, hummingbirds–flit in and out of those trees all year, swooping past my porch. I take for granted that the caretakers of these natural wonders will leave their trees be, that they will never hack them down. Not so long ago, I realized that a portion of my daily happiness was dependent on this simple act: They could chop down a tree, and my life would change.

On my knees last Sunday, for three hours, I unearthed mounds of dead-nettle and other weeds to do my part in beautifying the outside world, one little patch. Year after year, I do this. It hurts, these past years, my lower back, and my knees ache, too, during these weeding hours, despite the foam cushion. But it’s worth it. It seems important. I feel I have a responsibility to the lilies, to my neighbors, to myself. It is a small thing, but to me, necessary. My mother did not own a home when she raised me; she rented apartments, so there were no gardens to tend or grasses to mow. Later though, when she was the age that I am now, she had a house of her own, and she planted a row of roses in a raised, bricked bed in her own backyard. A miracle, to see her caring for soil and petals, like it mattered.

In Volume 7, Issue 2 of Club Plum, we tend to the small things, like they matter, because they do. We burrow through the remnants of a life lived in our parent’s house, now our house; we carry our father’s hammer with us from city to city, home to home; and we place our loved one’s ashes into a hole, in the earth, near the sea. 

Please join us as we carry on.

Yours in Words and Art,

Thea

# Club Plum Literary Journal #ClubPlum Club Plum Literary Journal #Club Plum Literary Journal #ClubPlum Club Plum Literary Journal