Get thee to a nunnery!

Not just ANY nunnery, though. This one used to be a swanky mansion in Wheeling, West Virginia. It's still swanky (well, in a "we're retreating from the world" kind of way), but now it's the St. Joseph's Retreat Center. Nine other teachers and I drove up here for a writing retreat last weekend. Notice my car in the front drive (the red Bug); does that show how much I belong in a mansion, even one now run by nuns? And when I say we "drove up," we really drove uphill; I ran the hill Saturday morning and was very unhappy with my choice to do so. WAAY too steep for these legs!

Our agenda for the retreat: eat, write, eat some more, write, eat some more, get together to share what you wrote. I wrote FOR FUN-- no article deadlines, no practicality at all-- for the whole day Saturday. The picture above is where I spent the afternoon writing. Not very many people come here, and those who do are really quiet, so the deer-- and there are TONS of deer-- aren't quite sure what people are. All morning while I was writing deer kept creeping up to figure out what I was. One even settled down in the grass to watch me. A woman with a pen and a legal pad, scribbling away; fascinating viewing, I'm sure. So I ended up sunburned and with sap in my hair from sitting under a pine tree all afternoon, but it was worth it!

This was another coveted writing spot. As soon as we arrived we got a tour of the grounds, and you could almost see the wheels turning in people's eyes, scoping out potential writing spots. I actually thought the porch swing was too high off the ground for me to write comfortably, but I swung in it Saturday evening after dinner.

Here was our group gathering spot. The picture's a little dark, but look at the big windows. Each of those windows had a very deep window seat in it with a heater installed underneath the seat. Anyone remember the opening of Jane Eyre where she hides behind the red curtains in the library? You could totally do that with these window seats.

This place had beautiful carved fireplaces and ceilings, lots of comfy furniture to sit on, and it was just plain peaceful. When we gathered together to share our writing, it kind of felt like a cross between a slumber party and one of those soirees Gertrude Stein was known for hosting. Hmm . . . an academic slumber party? What was most interesting to me was that every single one of us almost backed out of coming because we were too busy and then every single one of us talked about how grateful we were we came. I felt like I went back in time and walked into a Jane Austen novel for a couple of days. I gotta do this again sometime. Anyone own a beach house I can invade for a few days?

Attempts at Spring Cleaning

Can someone please explain to me why the one weekend I finally get up the energy to get to Kmart and buy the last few curtain panels I need the store is OUT of them? I have lots of windows in my house, and if I had my druthers, there would be no curtains at all because I like lots of light. Unfortunately, no curtains means no privacy, and it was bad enough when I moved in two years ago and neighbors I've never spoken to talked in their driveway (I could hear their conversation from my living room window) about what color I'd chosen to paint the TV room. So curtains are, alas, a necessity.

I thought I would just do a window at a time, making things manageable. I didn't count on Kmart occasionally running out of whatever type of curtain I most needed. THIS time I figured I was safe. Nope. I came home yesterday four panels short and still needing three curtain rods. Grr!

So instead, I tore down wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom today.

Please grow! Please? Pretty please?

So in between General Conference sessions, I planted climbing roses. This one is "sombreuil," and it's representative of the five others that are also now in my flowerbed. The roses arrived Thursday, it rained all day Friday (making the ground nice and soft for digging), and I planted Saturday. No worries, right?

Wrong. I REALLY want these roses to grow. I've been dreaming about them all winter. I went to Southern States to get rose food, went to Lowe's for trellises, bought extra topsoil because all the soil is clay around here. The problem is that I've only grown roses in California, and pretty much anything you stick in the ground grows in California. I probably could plant the bare root roses upside down in California and they'd grow.

I got my shovel and got ready to plant. "Dig hole that is 12-15 inches wide and 18 inches deep." No problem, I have a shovel. Problem. Tree roots. And rock. About a foot down. Not in all places, so a few of the roses got planted deeply enough. "Mix peat moss with rose food and make a cone of dirt for the roots to grow on in the hole." Whoops-- got topsoil rather than peat moss, but hey, there's peat moss left over in the shipping materials. At least a little. I'll just go extra on the rose food. "Plant deep enough that the graft is below the level of the ground." I tried; see tree root and rock issue above. "Cover canes with an 8 inch mound of dirt until the first green shoots appear." Umm . . . that would require another trip to Southern States, and while I love seeing the baby chicks and ducklings there, I don't have time to go again. What happens if I don't mound dirt around the canes? Check directions . . . they could dry out in the several weeks it takes for the plants to come out of dormancy (why don't they say wake up?). That's if there's a really warm day. Hmm. It's supposed to snow Monday, so I'm more worried about them freezing.

Maybe this is trivial to pray about, but after I got all the roses I planted I actually had a little talk with Heavenly Father, explaining that I'd done everything I could to follow directions and plant these roses so they'd grow, but there were factors that might prevent them from actually thriving. I can water, but that's about it.

So then it occurred to me that these roses can extend Alma's faith analogy in Alma 32 (in The Book of Mormon, for any non-LDS blog readers). Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave a leadership talk about a year ago when he talked about the importance of patterns, and that came to mind, too. The pattern for these roses is to plant them 18 inches deep in well-drained soil and keep them protected with dirt until they grow. Actual flowerbed conditions didn't match the pattern, which made me sad. But I planted anyway. I mean, what am I going to do? Send the roses back? They're sitting there, I want them in my yard, and so I had to work with what I had available. The faith part is planting and watering them, following the directions the best I could. But I can't make them start growing. That's God's job.

One more talk connection: another member of the Quorum of the Twelve (either Russell M. Nelson or Richard G. Scott-- I forget) spoke a few years back about families and how there's an ideal pattern for family life. He also said, though, and this is the part that's stayed with me, that we can try as hard as we can to live that ideal pattern, but often for reasons we just can't control we can't live that pattern, even though we want to. So we do the very best we can and trust God to do the rest. Planting these roses is a tangible reminder that I need to do the same with the pattern of my life.

Hopefully the plants will wake up and create roses this summer. I'll keep you posted.