Ode to a Home Depot Cherry Tree

Well, not really, but it does make me very sad. They had a bunch of 5-graft cherry trees, and each one had one variety, one graft, dead. They were different varieties on each one. I really wanted one of those for a tub planting...

Maddenningly, all the apple trees had five healthy living grafts. I wonder if it just doesn't work for cherries with that many?

Failure?

There was a discussion on a mailing list recently over whether failure was bad or not. I think they decided that people believe unequivocally that it is.

Certainly, I feel bad when I fail at something that's important to me, and often I will not allow something to be important to me because I'm afraid of failing.

More often than failing completely, though, often an approach to something will fail. Sometimes it'll work for awhile and then just suddenly stop, sometimes it won't work in the first place. This is kind of confusing at times, because so often I rely on the world around me being consistent, but of course it isn't. It takes me awhile to recognise failure in a situation when it comes to me, and then I take even longer to figure out whether I've failed just in this situation, or at the thing in general.

Sometimes you do have to give up on something altogether. Sometimes you need to back away and consider the situation, though, so you can look at it and approach it differently. Sometimes you even have a backlog of different ways to approach the situation, and can try them in a row, bang bang bang, and maybe one will work.

In a lot of situations failure, either of the situation or of the thing in general, isn't at all critical. Juggling, riding a bike, even growing pawpaws; a little oney or a little time is wasted, but these things have little to no impact when you can't do them.

I don't think I particularly fail more at the important stuff, where I and other people are hurt as a consequence. I do know that I notice it nore. I don't like doing it. It's harder to try other ways of approaching the thing when my or other peoples' happiness is involved.

Particularly in relationship stuff (and you knew I was going here, because this is always what it's about) I don't feel like I should fail at things, especially if they've worked for awhile. That is, I think it's okay intellectually to do, but it hurts me a lot when there's disappointment or sadness on anyone's side when it doesn't work out. Further, it's a lot harder to change tacks, bang bang bang, when there are other people involved. People like stability, me amongst them.

I have the firm belief that it's okay to ask for anything, as long as the other people can say no. I've changed that, recently, to 'it's okay to ask, as long as the other people can say no *and know it*.' Granted, it's tricky to know what someone else knows, and that tangles me up sometimes, but it was an important addition.

So I'll ask, and I'll keep going, and we'll see about finding a situation that fits everyone involved. I'm just afraid, right now and for no particular reason, that there isn't one.

Love is...

...a small bundle of hope sprouting on fertile ground.

Thanks, silverseastar. :)

Cherry Update And Rain

Alright, so I went to the local David Hunter garden center, where they had 4 varieties of cherry on a graft. The trees were so much better and more solid looking, though they were about twenty bucks more. I always have the urge to rescue stuff from home-depot-type places, but if I want something healthy that will last that's certainly not the way to go for this. I also saw a robinia 'purple robe' there, which I want to look up, and some 'apple blossom' clematis armandii. Also jerusalem artichoke, but no horseradish as yet. There were some large trees there as well - standard as opposed to dwarf, so you're lookin at I think 35 feet or so. That might almost be tall enough for the corner, though unharvestable as cherries. Hrm.

The world needs more broadleafed evergreen shrubs and vines.

It's raining now on the big pile of mud in the backyard that is The Trench. It rained on me at the nursery, too. Nice to be out in, but I'm underdressed and it's cold. I'll be glad to get home and crawl into bed -- I've used up my warm bath allowance for the day, so that's what I'll do.

Take care.

Snorfle

Yes, snorfle it is.

I'm home from work, and tired. I'm trying to decide between eating a bunch of brownies for supper and regretting it, ot doing dishes and making real food. What do you think?

I'm also trying to decide if it's time to shave my head or if I want to grow the stuff a little longer.

This has been your last Greenie-filled update for today. Weird how I post more when I'm busy, isn't it? You'd think I wouldn't have time.

I keep planning to hit Kits beach and Burrard Station with the camera before the cherries and magnolias are gone (there's another magnolia on 1st and woodland that's just painterly) but no time yet. We'll see.

I Lied. :)

Last post:

It's real food. And:

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I heard
Was a song outside my window, and the traffic wrote the words.
It came ringing up like Christmas bells and rapping up like pipes and drums...
Oh won't you stay, we'll put on the day, and wear it till the night comes.

...

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning and the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey andd a bowl of oranges too
And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses
Oh, won't you stay, we'll put on the day
And we'll talk in present tenses

An the curtain closes
And the rainbow runs away
I will bring you incense owls by twilight
By candlelight, by jewellight if only you will stay...

Pretty baby won't you wake up, it's a Chelsea morning.

Joni Mitchell, that one. I've always thought, based on that song, that Chelsea must be like Kits. :)

If you have...

...a square peg and a round hole, and the square peg's got these corners such that it's too big to fit through the hole, so you take it away, you still have a round hole.

This wisdom has been brought to you by the letter G, and the late-night livejournal overdrive society. Don't worry, I won't be near a computer tomorrow at all, these will slow down. :)