[personal] Slow Detachment.

I’ve finished with the last of the heavy yard work until fall. Over the last 24 hours, we’ve removed a huge, mostly dead 20-year old azalea and three unruly and rather nasty Barberry bushes. Replace the azalea with a small golden Spirea and the Barberries with a dinky little dwarf variety of the same. Smaller is better. Somehow, fresher.

After the summer weather passes (and the threat of birch borers), four-six more trees are slated for the yard debris bin. That will happen regardless of how long we keep our house. They are all weak trees. The place will look better without them.

Of course, no decisions have been made yet. We may get to keep this place after all, should The Man find similar-paid work in Portland. If not, then Corvallis or Seattle it’ll have to be. Can’t be helped. Not if we want to survive.

I found myself flipping between feeling strong emotional attachment to this place, the home we built from the bare ground up and feeling excitement for a fresh start (with next to nothing in material things or finances – how adventurous!). I want to believe that people my age (55) shouldn’t be in the position of losing everything for a “fresh start.” Then again, this is what everyone calls the New economy and this is how big corporations work. One hundred years ago, people exactly my age were losing everything; we didn’t live to what we today consider really old age. We’re not dying (yet), we’re just re-organizing. I guess I’m whining about nothing.