Mid-morning on a sunny, late summer Sunday, and a day wide open before me. I just did a tour of the garden, pausing to pull up weeds and then carry my handful back to the compost pile. The garden is thriving after our recent rainy season although the promising crop of blueberries all disappeared as they ripened—I have netting draped across the bushes but I think some critter must be getting underneath to feast. Any squirrels or raccoons out there with blue mouths?

I’ve been in summer mode. Lanquid in the alternating heat and rain. I started a few blog posts and then abandoned them. I’ve gone to work, walked down the block to look at the sunset most evenings that it wasn’t pouring rain, eaten ice cream with friends, sat on the back porch listening to crickets as it gets dark or bird song first thing in the morning.

I went to a Saturday morning Tanglewood rehearsal, spent a day with friends at a New Hampshire lake, a week in New Hampshire for work, and two weeks in England with my sister. Soon the university and colleges will start up, the pace is quickening as we approach autumn. Various writing projects are swirling in my head and I’m getting ready to dig in.

That “back-to-school” energy has also led to cleaning out closets and clearing off bookshelves—my house is in chaos with stacks of things to toss and stacks to move to a new location. The next step is shifting furniture around and eventually my guest room will be a combination guest room and office and the room that is now doing triple duty as laundry room, cat box home, and cluttered, messy office will become a utility room.

This is something I’ve thought about doing for years and am finally acting on because…drumroll…I’m making a transition from working full time for someone else to freelancing—hence the need for a more functional home office.

The clearing out process has slowed periodically as I discover old journals, folders of letters, and boxes of photos. I pause to thumb through and sometimes get lost in the dreams and fears and ideas from 10, 15, 20 years ago. One such find was a copy of the Berkshire Review from 1998, which included an essay of mine, “Transitional Seasons.”

I wrote the essay just after leaving a career as a social worker and, new MFA in hand, venturing into the world of writing, editing, and teaching. I describe being lured away from writing and into the garden. I muse on the lessons I learned in the garden—and in the pottery studio—about the desire for control vs. the need to let go and trust the process. At the end, I describe a spring day when I’d been trying to work on a short story but my attention kept being drawn to the world outside:

“I gave up the illusion of writing and sat in the garden. The redstarts darted and swooped, a pair of tanagers flew by, so close to me I felt the slight breeze they stirred; a hummingbird buzzed my red-shirted shoulder. My eyes flicked around trying to catch glimpses of brilliance. It felt difficult to return to the computer then, but I did, if only to record the experience of sitting with all that vibrant life winging around me. I felt blessed in some way and humbled, although those words are too intense somehow, too grand for what was a small experience, one morning, that’s all, in which I chose to be in the pulsing present moment. In the end, that’s all there is. I throw a hunk of clay on the wheel and slowly move it toward center. I rest my hands on the keyboard and write about what I’m living.”