Friends in pots and and light.

We are doing some serious evaluating at the Oddly House. .  er apartment. As many of you know already, we are purchasing our first house and will have to pack things up and move them into a larger place than we have now. My husband is going over interior details of moving things: kids rooms, furniture appliance delivery etc, cable and electricity. . . my concern: plants. I have spent years and years cultivating my little garden in their pots. Moving them with the sun to be certain they don't broil in the summer heat or starve/ freeze in the winter light. Some of their pots, by standards of terra cotta planters, are down right ancient. I fear a crumbling is on its way.

I spend a lot of time talking with my plants and listening to their daily grind in the sun or the moon trying to figure how best to help them thrive in their little pots. These are my friends. They generously offer my their leaves flowers and fruits for my potions both magic and healing, They are company when my husband is off taking care of filming business or at the day job. They are respite from the general household noise of three children playing inside not so quietly. I have been in this arrangement with these plants on my patio for five years. Now I have to tell them that we are going to disrupt their pattern, shift their light, and jostle their roots much more than they have ever been jostled before. I'm not looking forward to this task but it must be done. I have treated these plants as magical friends and allies.

I know that some of these plants are just waiting to have their feet put in the earth. I am hoping that they take this whole jostling expedition as a new adventure where some of them will get to leave the confines of the pot and join the root choir of the earth. My aloes however, will have to remain in their pots. They will take over the yard in a heartbeat.

Not only is moving the plants a concern. I have to ask help of the local spirits that help me care for them to come along as well. I am uncertain whether it is my garden that attracted them or if they are bound to the land here at the apartment complex and I have been here long enough where they find the investment of their energies worth the effort.

I will have to say good bye to the trees I have been making offerings to for sheltering my home from heat and wind. I will miss them. I will miss the triple crossroad sidewalks everywhere I turn here. I will miss the dogs that parade by at all hours of the day and night while taking their friends out for a walk. I will miss the old feral tom cat that curls up on my chair at night to sleep. Although Nike won't. She goes crazy with another cat out on her patio.

There are things I do know about this process. I do know that the baby dove who passed and is buried in one of my pots will be coming along. It is an interesting thing that has happened with her. She fell from her nest on to the sidewalk. I couldn't leave her there to become sidewalk mush to such things as children  riding bikes and scooters. So I picked her little shell up and buried it with offerings in one of my pots. Every now and again I hear wings stir. I didn't make the connection with her at first, but as I thought more about things I began to realize she has taken a place here at my home.

She will be most welcome at the new home. When my husband and I got the opportunity to look at the home we are buying in the beginning of the process we have been going through, there were a pair of doves that greeted us. It felt like a good omen from the beginning. Now we bring with us to a new home a baby dove's spirit. I am hoping that her presence will protect all future nestlings that are hatched in our trees and for those inevitable deaths that will come in the monsoons, a gentle guide to move their spirits through the gate. She has already shown herself to be a protector to my little ones. I am still fumbling around trying to figure the best way to make offerings to her. She has been most patient with me. I hope that during this move, she takes the jostling well.