Piles On My Desk

Sometimes, to get the tidy result, a mess must first be made.

Do you know what I mean? Empty the garage so you can sweep it out and organize; pile everything from the fridge all over the counters so you can scrub and clean and put back the good stuff.

I do it weekly at my bookkeeping job at church. Once I have pulled out all of my mail and inbox work and start establishing piles, it looks like I have absolutely no organization:

But truly, there is a method to my madness. I just keep whittling away at the piles until everything is printed, signed, mailed, communicated, reconciled, and filed. And when my desk looks like this:

I go home! 

Garden Makeover

Perennials are the best.

I have six flower beds with 900 square feet of planting space in our yard, and each one has primarily perennials. I cultivate and rearrange and thin and sell and pull out and cut for arrangements and give away and thoroughly enjoy them.

We have a long, narrow bed right by our front porch. When we moved in, there were already a few rose bushes and some tall phlox, and I added a few things through the years.

While it's really established and pretty, I also felt that it was getting quite overgrown. The ground cover was kind of a pain, and the lavender patch on the right end was overtaking things.

So I enlisted the help of the men in my family, and they were so kind to dig up everything. Yes, everything.

Quite a collection that was redistributed to a few other spots in my yard and shared with a friend

A Blank Slate

A drain spout goes right through this bed, so it's been nice to have a strong root system in recent years. (I didn't think of this fact when I decided to do this revamping project.)

I'm concentrating on adding back some of my favorite perennials that grow in a more controlled, circular pattern. Yarrow, heuchera, Japanese iris, veronica, and mums are a few that I am working on moving into this new spot.

I transplanted a lot of the lavender to an often-unseen area where weeds constantly threaten to take over. I am hoping that the lavender wins next year!

The guys dug up those threatening weeds here, too,
so I could move some of my plants to this area.

The past few days, I have worked on rearranging and sharing some of my favorites from the back yard into this flower bed. It's so empty! But once I add some mulch to tuck it all in for the winter, it will be fun to see what comes back bigger and stronger and prettier next year!

Returning to the Work World

I've always had a bookkeeping job - it was bigger in our early marriage, and I juggled a lot when our children were young. It was even busier when we home schooled and I took kids and books to work and came home and found that kids hadn't completed their assignments; so it was nice when work scaled back for me as we continued our ten years of home schooling.

In recent years, I have been working one short day each week, keeping books for our church. It's not too demanding, and I have been able to serve my family and others without stressing too much about not having enough time at home.

As my youngest entered college a few weeks ago, I was a little concerned that her absence at home was going to leave me blue in the mid-week afternoons. We have shared a very close friendship, being highly involved in each others' lives. However, we are adapting to the changed structure in life. (And it doesn't hurt that we still exchange a few texts, emails, and phone calls frequently.)

I set my sights on getting busy - seeking caregiving or household organization jobs, considering a virtual office assistant job at the recommendation of a former boss, and applying for a few positions with our local school district.

God has provided just the right amount of "busy" for me during these first weeks of college: I have cared for a friend's mother at home on hospice; I have met up with a friend and her little ones for a play date; I have listed lots of stuff on CraigsList and done substantial de-cluttering; and most recently, I was offered a position as a substitute para educator with our school district.

I enjoy staying busy, and it's been nice to find that I still have marketable skills and am making an impact with new relationships!