Life in Transition

My life is in transition.
So what, my life is always in transition. It's called time.
Saturday, I went out to transplant my irises -another story- and saw that my rock wall was teetering. This rock wall was very pretty from the lower yard, but as I stood above it, it was obviously ready to reinforce the laws of gravity. I moved it into the flattened area I'd carved out of the hill to transplant my irises and took about six more inches off the back. Now it's sturdy. I filled and mixed dirt and gave the irises a more permanent home. Life in transition.

While fixing the iris bed, I saw the plight of some over exuberant frogs stuck in the upper pond which a gardening show convinced me should be converted to a bog. I began bringing large gravel up from the bottom of the hill where we'd tossed it when we put in the pool two years ago. As I filled the small pond with the gravel, the water only rose in the pond not helping the plight of the floundering frogs at all. I began putting the buckets of gravel into one edge until it was touching the back top of the water level. Eventually the three living frogs made it to the rocks. One frog was too far gone. I felt good that I'd respected life. Life in transition.
Sunday afternoon, my husband and I walked up to check on some things and look at what I want to do with the upper course of the water stream (manmade) (womanmade actually). I saw that only one frog actually made it out. Three lay floating and bloating in the small pond at the gravel's edge. But a closer look made me realize the world would not miss them. The pond is full of polywogs. Of course, when I fill it with gravel, I'll displace many. But there is life - in transition. It is a thing of ebb and flow, of rain and drought, or exuberance and quietness. When your frogs have died, you get polywogs. "This is not the end - it is the beginning" "The worst thing that can happen is we fix it." I tell these things to my students regularly as they survey work that seems imperfect or unsettling in its transition. Some events are for learning only. Some give you a surprising lift.
It's life in transition.