Gardening Gone Awry

“Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions - not outside.”

-Marcus Aurelius

Ah, Marcus, my old friend over these last three decades. That it should be so easy.

Up since 3 a.m. worrying about a deposition here in a little while, then worrying about half a dozen other files that sit like ticking time bombs on my virtual shelf.

A realization, or series of realizations, arrived sometime around 4:

1. It is far harder to maintain a remote practice than to maintain a brick-and-mortar office where one arrives at 8 and leaves at 6.

2. It is far harder to live in two places than one.

3. It is far harder to practice law alone than in a firm surrounded by people who can take up the slack.

This will all be fine, of course. I'm just eaten up every single day with deadlines and too many tasks. I attended depositions yesterday that were handled masterfully by the young lawyer on the other side--he'd clearly spent hours getting ready, and his line of inquiry and exhibits were logical and to the point, with no meander. For the same depositions I had maybe an hour, tops, to prepare, and it showed. That's become the pattern.

Peg says I just need to get out of litigation. Probably so. But it'll take years, and requires that fateful day when I say "no more" when someone calls, as they do a couple times a week, desperate for help in a lawsuit.

And the Braves are tanking, blowing a huge lead against the D-backs last night to lose 11-10. They were up six runs going into the ninth. The Bravos find themselves eleven games out of first before the end of the first week of June. It's feeling like a lost season already.

I'll leave the Elon-Trump breakup for another day. I did find the front page of the New York Post pretty funny, however.

Let's talk about gardening instead.

This is the first season here that we hadn't bothered to plant flowers or try to grow herbs and vegetables. The house is under contract, so why make the effort? At the same time, the closing isn't until mid-August, and that's a lot of time to grow squash and peppers and tomatoes. Plus, it's just depressing to walk up on the place with no flower pots hanging from the columns. We need a morale boost.

So I fixed that yesterday.

I don't think Peg has noticed yet. It does spruce up the place a bit.

She did notice the gardening out back, because I sent her pics while she was standing in the operating room yesterday.

But the weather gods had other plans for this venture. Last night, while our dinner guests were sitting around the table telling stories and lightning, thunder, and torrential rain filled the darkness outside, I stepped out onto the back porch to check on my plants and was unpleasantly surprised to see our recently cleaned gutters giving up and pouring rainwater over the gunwhales and directly into the two herb pots. All that cilantro, parsley, basil, and rosemary was drowning in the torrent. So I scrambled to pull the pots out of the waterfall, and started pouring out the water that had accumulated to the point it was washing to potting soil over the sides. Apparently the drain holes in the bottoms of the pots were clogged.

So we'll see if they survive.

Time to get after finishing my prep for this deposition. Way too much to do today before P gets home from work and we wind our way up the beautiful valley through Cohocton and Naples to spend the weekend at the Cliff.