Bramble sprung up

I noticed the other day, in my flower beds, a riotous bunch of new growth.  Gone was the bright Spring shoots of new life, the tender and slender stalks, the small fragile bits that make up miniature fields all in 1 stretch of ground not even the full length of my house.  Now life has taken root and taken over.  Now is work, weeding and the chore of tending.  The crocuses have dimmed, their tall leaves growing and the flyaway seeds of weeds and wildflowers taking root along side them.  Thickets of tangle overtake the first signs renewal.  Now they are the dominant force and I am taken aback at how my little patches of land have gotten away from me.
When the earth warmed and the ground was moist and barren, these first signs popped up, fresh and cheery. And now Summer has not yet filled the air but I see her evidence in the ground, wet with rain or dried with shine, rife with scrub and boisterous pop-up plants.  Now the thickets threaten the grass--my lawn if I mow it often enough--bragging and boastful in their sprouting, "Look how high!  Look how messy!  I'll fill you up too before too long."  And they might.  I've got my work cut out for me.
I cannot bring myself to pull them all just yet though.  There are so few that are truly thick-stemmed and angry.  Mostly they are a new green afro covering the earth, fuzzy and intertwined.  I have plans--a kitchen garden of herb plants, a flowerbed for color and cutting--but those things I intended are not blooming yet and do not need the stage.  They are grown taller, fanning themselves out.  But they are not themselves yet as I remember them.
This place is still new to us, a plot we have not lived in a full year.  I remember pulling weeds in patches as I needed the space in the Fall, but I need nothing now.  I am not ready to transplant, group or cluster.  Our landscaping is never that precise anyway.  I know what's coming from I planted months ago.  It's these unexpected things I notice now.  How quick they are!  How they use the rain to their advantage.  How prolific and sudden.  I don't have a plan for them, probably will not even next year.  Why would I?  Eventually the space will be filled with more and more perennials.  We'll chip away at this bramble year to year.  Or maybe we won't.  In my naivete I may think so, only to have more spring up elsewhere.  And so be it.  The ground is the ground and the growth the growth.  I will do my things and the miniature bramble will begin to block the sun to the basement windows.  I no plans for every part of my plot.  Only as things occur to me, as I see potential for a more manicured thicket, will I intrude.  I like the work, when I want it, and have no inclination to be beholden to my yard by needing a pristine cut pattern, or clean cuts rather frayed blades of grass; I braid the suckers sprouting from I know not what kind of leafy thing leftover from the previous purveyors of this land.  Let us both grow, taking a little time for crossing paths, but without needing to be in each other's way.

Being Young

I am young.  I know this.  I knew it at 16, when my grandparents couldn't believe how fast I'd grown up.  I knew that I would one day say the same thing of some young person.  I was never naive enough to think I wouldn't one day be a grandparent as well, or a great aunt, and have those same thoughts.  I didn't know how it would feel, to see a baby I could remember stuffing cake into her mouth at her 2-year old birthday party suddenly almost graduating from high school, but I knew enough to know that someday I would feel it.

I knew it at 25 when my insurance rate went down and I suddenly felt like an adult with responsibility, wise and with a car.  I knew this was lie and I was actually still young and when someone, a co-worker maybe, 50 years old, told me, "You're still just a kid!"  And they were right.   I knew they were.  I was young, but 50 wasn't old.  Fifty was just later.  80 was old.

Now I am 42 and I know that I am still young.  I know that I am almost the people I thought were middle aged when I had my first child at 30.  I am almost middle age.  Might be except Middle Age is now older than 42.  But the 81 year old scoffs.  "You're so young!"   And now, 81 doesn't seem old.  91 maybe...

And I will know when I'm 92, even while I am that daffy old lady relegated to the comfy chair in the corner, thankful to not to have to pay attention so closely and left to doze off if I want,   I will know that in my heart and mind I'm really only 60.  92 is the new 60.

Even this, my vision of my 92 year old life, proves that I am young.  Only the young would assume that there is time to rest on the horizon.  For at each age, do we not find that there is always something more to do?  Some other cause to put our efforts to?  We are never dozy.  Tired from exams, yes.  Exhausted with a new baby, yes.  Fed up and frustrated with those we think should act according to their age, position and status--yes.  But to just wander off in a dream?  No one but the young think this frivolity is what is waiting in the land of Getting Older.

Paying rent terrified me when I first had to.  It terrified me that I would need to come up with and pay $400 a month for a place to live.  How was that accomplished?  How did adults garner such sums?  I was young.  I didn't realize that saving money is not the same as making it.  Squirreling away birthday checks and chore money, babysitting fees over a period of months does not compare with a job and earning potential.  Rent represented a leap of faith in a world I had not experienced but was expected to assimilate into.  And it happened; I did it. I worked 40 hours; I paid $400 dollars.  And more.  Because there are other adult things like the price of gas per gallon and soup on sale.
Parenthood is exciting.  I was not scared about being a parent, just hopeful that I could be consistently as kind and inspiring in reality as I envisioned myself to be when imagining imparting advice and guidance to my little ones.  Paying rent prepared me I guess.  Or Life keeps happening, whether you pay the rent or not.  If the baby is on the way, it will be here whether you are prepared or not.  I am young, but I know these things.  I know I don't completely understand them.  But even in this there is wisdom: be open-hearted; be willing.  In this there is a kernel of what we always know, even before we learn it.  I cling to the kernel, try to remember that I know it, that I can recall it when I need to, whatever my age.  I am young; be young with me.