Landscaping

In other news, and to follow up on a long-running thread (suture?) formerly woven through this blog, we've saved the park.

After several months (actually years going back before my involvement) of contentious debate, the neighborhoods have prevailed and managed to save the lovely meadow in historic Tanyard Creek Park. Best of all, we managed to preserve the meadow while at the same time getting the multi-use bicycle and pedestrian trail with its associated neighborhood and greenspace inter-connectivity routed through a compromise path to the west of the meadow. The west-side route should allow the historic meadow to remain the cherished greenspace that it is today while making the trail a more diverse and beautiful route through the neighborhood.

They say you can't fight City Hall, but we did and we won. Of course, the solution is so apparent and intuitively obvious one wonders why there was any resistance from the City to start with.

Last Thursday, I walked through the park after work just to remind myself that the whole struggle was worth it. While there, I met a young woman whom I've known through the course of this battle, a vocal defender of the greenspace, and we got to talking about my planned move to Portland. I complained about the amount of time the relocation is taking, and how I hate living in what I call "In-Between Land," not yet where I want to be and not wanting to invest myself any more in my present situation. How, then, is one to live one's life?

"You've got a life here in Atlanta," she said. "Just go on living it."

Very Zen-like, here-and-now advise from a non-practitioner, and the words went straight to my heart. Without clinging to the past, without dreaming of the future, I can enjoy my life right now, this very minute.

Right now, Atlanta life for me is mostly getting the house ready for the market. Yesterday, the landscapers finally came by and swept away the winter's leaves, trimmed bushes and ivy, and generally did a great job of making the outdoors look terrific. I've been enjoying just walking around outside in my property again, the first time I have since first heading to Portland.

(Of course, it would be much easier to enjoy if I hadn't chipped a tooth at work late Friday afternoon, too late to make an appointment with the dentist. As it is, now I have to wait until Monday morning to call, and hope that I can get an appointment before I have to head back to Jena, Louisiana on Wednesday. But for now, I have to walk around with yet another gap in my crooked smile, while my tongue runs over the unfamiliar jagged edges of broken tooth.)

Next week, the handyman should arrive to fix up and repair some mostly interior things. The odd part is that all of this is making me appreciate the house all the more (it is starting to look pretty good), and to more appreciate my life here in Atlanta. (Hey! We're getting a new multi-use trail and we're keeping the lovely meadow!) The irony is that in order to move out of this house, I have to first make myself at home in it.