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After taking the video in my studio this afternoon, the pile of firewood outside my window  still taunted me.

So when I finished designing my Emily Dickinson, Secrets quilt and packing up the last of my I Am Enough posters, (UPS delivered the mailing tubes today), taking a walk in the woods with Fate and eating dinner, I was back outside tossing the last to the wood into the woodshed and stacking it.

I got most of it done, but it got too dark and I was too tired to finish. But I did have some insights stacking these two cords of wood.

One of them is something Jon wrote about on his blog tonight.

It’s about my desire to do my part on the farm because I don’t make as much money as Jon does and how Jon often feels like he can’t do as much of the physical work.  We  talk about how we each couldn’t live here without the other. And that really, we’re a perfect match for living this kind of life together.  Each doing what the other can’t.

But still somehow we each also always feel as if we’re not doing enough.

Another thing that happens when I stack wood is it brings up memories of my old life, of the hard physical work I used to do restoring old houses with my ex-husband.  At that point in my life, stacking wood was a chore that became a burden.

But as  those memories came to me this time, I recognized them and let them go, as I learned to do when meditating.  And then I wondered if I hadn’t finally come to the point where I stacked enough wood to work  all the memories out, like sweating the poison out of my body.

And I thought this because I began to notice that instead of memories, new thoughts were coming to me.  And then, just recognition of what I was doing. Noticing how my body  felt as I bent over to pick up the wood and how my left hand couldn’t grasp the large heavy pieces like  my right hand could.

And each time I came out of the woodshed back to the pile of wood I looked at the sky or felt the breeze or really saw just how green the grass is.  I was experiencing what was around me  and my place in it.

I was being in the moment.

I also felt the  satisfaction of filling up the woodshed with wood.  Of knowing that when the winter comes, I’ll be bringing the same wood into the house and burning it in the stoves, warming our old  house in a way that the baseboards can’t.

Even thought I’m not cutting the wood and hauling it to the house, or paying for it to be done, stacking it makes me feel more connected to the process.  Acknowledging the sacrifice of the trees and being even more grateful for them.

Four times I began writing Emily Dickinson’s poem Secrets on a linen, and four times I made mistakes.  “Give it up, Maria,” I said out loud, “it’s not working today.”

A couple of days ago, I wrote out ten poems and phrases on linens and didn’t make one mistake.  Sometimes when I give in  on something like this feels like giving up.  But in truth, it’s about knowing that I just need to let it go for a while and get back to it later or the next day.

It’s about knowing myself.

So instead of spending the rest of the day making mistake after mistake and having to cut down more linens than necessary, I sorted through the linens I washed yesterday to use in the quilt,  then went outside and planted the ten sapling trees I got from the Arbor Day Society.

They came in the mail on Tuesday so I wanted to get them in the ground.

I began this tradition of planting at least 10 trees in the spring,  last year.  It’s a way of replanting the trees we use for fire wood every winter.  I plant the saplings in the woods behind the farm.

But this year I put one in the front yard.

I think it’s a white pine, a fast growing tree that will block the sound and sight of the traffic in years to come.  It’s snuggled between two young lilac bushes that I transplanted a couple of years ago.

I planted  the other eight trees (I lost one sapling when it fell out of my bucket and I couldn’t’ find it in the ground cover) between the woods and the back pasture.  The soil this is often moist and it’s sunny. I know there’s a slim chance that all the trees will grow, but I try to put them in a place where they’ll have a good start.

I planted the saplings along the path where I walk, so over time I do hope to be able to see them grow.  Six of the ten trees I planted last year are still alive.  They’re easier to see because they’re pines, this year seven of the ten trees I planted are hardwoods.

I’ll go to my Bellydancing class in a little while and I’m counting on it to turn my mood around.  It usually does.  Then tomorrow I’ll be back in the studio, a renewed Maria, confident and able to get back to work on my Emily Dickinson Secrets quilt.