I first saw this giant, pre-historic plant on a walk in the neighborhood and thought it could fill a hole in the back of the garden which, because we don’t see it from our patio, tends to get a bit neglected and overgrown. Bear’s Britches (Acanthus mollis), it’s called, maybe for the size of its leaves. The plant has grown as expansive as promised but this is the first year it has bloomed. You have to catch the tall, green cones at just the right angle to see the white beneath the flower’s hood. There is nothing dainty about this hard and heavy, 18-inch tower of a bloom.
For the past two weeks, I’ve gone back every day with camera to check the progress of the cones. With each visit, I’ve resolved to clean up the area - rescue the Fuchsia being hopelessly bent to the ground by the spiny asparagus fern that twists around and through its branches; weed around the young Camellia so it has more room to grow; cut back the ivy that has crawled across the ground and buried the columbine I’d forgotten was ready for spring; tame the Hebe and the jade plant, where both have nearly blocked the path. Finally, yesterday, I made good on that ambition.
I don’t have a lot of agility these days, so climbing in and under branches was a challenge, but that wasn’t the reason it has taken me so long. My list of projects for this enforced isolation extends well beyond the garden. I thought I’d sort and transfer all my photographs to an external hard drive, clean and reorganize the cupboards, update my website, make a quilt… the list goes on and on. Each day I revisit and reprioritize the list in my head and then, in the evening, I count all the things I haven’t done. Neither list diminishes. They grow. The days float by, retirement on steroids. There’s always tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.
I am slowly adjusting to the idea that this isolation is going to last much longer than we originally thought - that perhaps for me, at least, homebound has become the new normal. Indefinitely. If that is true, I need to forgive myself for the procrastination of the past 49 days and reinvent my life… figure out how I want to live and “do”. Or not. I can always think about that tomorrow.