Hello dear people! It has been a long time since I haven’t posted anything over here, mainly because life was so busy and troublesome in general, but I am going to try to come back again and tell you about my experiences and my journey.
I was a little bit sad the last couple of months because back in Venezuela, my grandpa was very ill and after battling cancer like a champion his last 10-15 years, finally he transitioned at the age of 93 like 4 weeks ago. It had been a long time since I had to say goodbye to a family member, and more from the distance is hard because I could not go and hold his hand for the last time or hug him, but I did say goodbye to him, through my mother I send words to him about how important he had been my whole life, as an inspiration, a role model, an example of strength, perseverance, and resilience.
This was a time of grieving and existentialism, and for weeks I have been trying to give sense and meaning to life, and searching inside of myself the wisdom to continue living the way I want and like everybody, in the eternal pursuit of happiness, comfort, love, and joy.
On a more positive note, I finally moved out of the department I had been living in for the past 2 ½ years, and now I have embarked on a new journey alongside my partner and my two dogs, and we are thrilled and very happy in our new place. We have a backyard now like I had been saying from the previous posts. I love gardening. I find it very therapeutic and is my way of connecting with the earth and with the universe, releasing stress, and remaining in the present.
We got here like 3 weeks ago, and the place hadn’t been inhabited since last year, so the backyard was full of bad weed and excessively long grass, a lot of types of greens that I haven’t seen before. Next are some pictures from my new garden, just as we received it when we moved.
After we unpacked for 3-4 days, I decided to spend a couple of days enhancing the backyard, but I did not have any gardening tools, so I went to the shop and got some gardening scissors, a pair of gloves, and a rake, to clean the grass.
In the department, I have lived on I used to plant small seeds in buckets, small flower pots where I kept the different plants I used to have, like cannabis and paprika, but in here I have all this space and I am amazed about all the possibilities that I have available to sow since is such a sunny and wonderful place to have all kinds of plants. Argentina is known to be fertile land, everything grows here and is even called "The Big Barn”, because agriculture is the strongest of economic forces of export, with soy being the main resource to sell everywhere else.
But before thinking about what to plant, I needed to start with the dirty job of removing all these big herbs and shrubbery, to leave it as clean as I could for the dogs and ourselves to be able to walk through it freely and do as we please. After I spent 2-3 days on the ground with the scissors and the gloves, I put all the chopped grass inside some of the cartoon boxes that we used to move here, to put everything aside and maybe try and compost it one day when I figure out a way of getting a compost bin or recipient.
Now I will show you the result. After days of cleaning and pruning, it looks a bit better now, but still, we have a lot to do, and I hope I’ll be able to update you soon about our progress here.
Even though is not an easy job to get this backyard better, it is as I said before, very nice to be able to breathe fresh air, get the sun in my face, to watch my dogs running like crazy from one side to another, to see the flock of birds singing in the sky every afternoon, and to look at the stars late in the night for a long time with my special person. This is my idea of living my best life, being quiet and home cooking, undisturbed, a little bit more distant from all the noise and the smoke of the city, and next dedicating my free time to gardening, caring for my plants, dogs, and love.
In honor of my grandpa, I will share the words that he always taught me, repeating them over and over during my life so much that I even recall rolling my eyes sometimes and telling him “I know! I won’t forget”. He always said: “If you do not expect to win every battle, you are already defeated, so stand up, be proud, stomp hard, and be happy for you”. It was like his cry of war and his way to say that in life we cant possibly win all the fights, but for sure we need to be prepared and confident to expect the good result always, staying positive and wanting the best for ourselves no matter how hard or difficult it seems. I promised him I will always remember, and so I will.
Life is hard, but if we try a lot to live the way we want it, maybe one day the road gets us home. Regards to everybody, I will stay in touch.
César.