Creating a Peaceful Place

February 26, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.
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The most ambitious DIY project I’ve ever taken on? That’s easy. Landscaping my yard.

When I moved here, the yard was dirt and weeds. It looked okay because the weeds had been cut down to make the house look good when it was put on the market, but still, just weeds. I hadn’t planned on doing anything to improve the property because I didn’t want to have to take care of a yard, but there were things that needed to be done, such as rocks laid around the house to protect the foundation. Then, when I found out I was tripping on all the holes and rocks among the weeds, I decided I needed walking paths of crushed rock to keep from falling and breaking my neck. Or a hip, anyway.

Admittedly, I didn’t do any of the rock labor, but the finished work gave me a sort of yard pride that seemed to demand further work. So gradually, I planted a few bushes, a few flowers, filled in some of the gardens that were created by the walkways, and things escalated from there.

I had a lawn mower, so I put in a bit of a lawn since I didn’t want the mower to go to waste (a silly reason for a lawn, I know, but it’s the truth). I had sod put in, but when that all died (the people I hired put in the wrong grass), I dug it up and planted a more heat-resistant strain of grass.

And so it goes . . .

What makes this DIY project so ambitious is that there doesn’t seem to be an end to it. There’s a lot of work just involved in maintenance, so that keeps me outside for a couple of hours each day, which makes me see how much more I can improve. I can see spots that need to be filled in or bits of color that will improve the looks of one of the gardens. And then there are container gardens and hanging pots to be replanted every year.

Yep, an unending project when in fact, what I had wanted was a yard that took no work.

Oh, well, there are worse things than a garden demands attention. And truly, I can’t think of a better use of my time than creating this peaceful place.

Besides, there all are the surprises I find, like this morning. Look! Crocuses!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in gardening, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 8 Comments »

Dark Too Soon

November 10, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I don’t mind being alone, don’t mind the reason behind the isolation (a huge upsurge of Bob activity in this area), but having to do it in the dark seems a bit much. I’m not really in the dark, since I can turn on lights, but the sun sets at 4:44 pm. It seems as if the day is no sooner getting started than it’s ending.

Even that, I suppose, isn’t such big a deal, but when it gets dark too soon and I haven’t done my daily blog post, then I panic. Where did the day go? What did I do all day? How can I write if I can’t remember?

I’m glad, of course, that my days are so uneventful. I’ve had enough trauma to last me a lifetime, and even though some friends are going through disastrous experiences, I am at one remove from their situations. A lesson I learned from my grief days (days? No. Years!) is to let people have their own sorrows. I empathize, of course, but I can’t take on their sadness — it belongs to them. Come to think of it, I’m even at one remove — or several removes — from my own grief. In four months, it will be twelve years, and that is a long time. (To put it into perspective, that’s the time it takes for nine-year-old children go through puberty then the teenage storms and finally to reach adulthood.)

The only thing of note I did today was turn my Suspense/Thriller Writers Group on Facebook from public to private. FB is changing the way they do groups, so now if you have a public group, anyone can join immediately without being vetted. Considering how many spammers find the group (not just robots but also authors who only want to promote their books), it would turn a rather innocuous and inert group into a nightmare. Besides, since my blog URL is still blocked, I have little interest in spending any time on FB. For now, I reblog this blog to another blog and post that URL on FB, but when they discover my ruse, and block the reblog, then I’m finished with them.

Although it’s not particularly noteworthy, since it’s something I do every day, I did go out and water my lawn. It still astonishes me that I did that — add a bit of lawn. I wanted just a small corner of grass in my yard (else what’s the point of having a lawnmower), but since I didn’t know how big of an area a pallet of sod would cover, I agreed to buy the two pallets a local landscaping company had left over from another job. I worried that it wouldn’t be enough to cover the 400-square-foot corner; instead it covered 1,000 square feet, if not more, especially since they had a partial pallet left over they threw in at no cost.

I suppose 1,000 square feet isn’t all that much lawn, though it seems huge when it needs to be watered.

Oh, and I did manage to blow most of the leaves off my rock, but a big wind will simply blow them back. So here’s hoping the winds remain fairly calm until the leaves settle in.

I hope you’re doing better with the early dark than I am. And to think it will continue getting darker for the next six weeks! Hmmm. Perhaps I shouldn’t think about that.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

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