Air

I've been struggling with trying to keep my lavendar plants from perishing in the July heat. I've also been struggling with trying to figure out what it really means to ujaii breathe and how to inhale on the way up to standing from a backbend.when I can't seem to do so without opening up my mouth and literally gasping for air.

Then I was reading this highly pretentioud article in some highly pretentious home design mag, in which some....you guessed it....highly pretentious interior designer was talking about how he loves to host formal garden parties because the ladies wear their Manolos and walk around (unintentionally) poking holes in the lawn.

Tilling the soil via designer stilettos. Working the land, while working the room.

Finally, yesterday, in the garden, I was attempting to locate the soil beneathe what turned out to be layer upon layer of woodchips and sawdust that, through the application of rain and dew and sprinkler irrigation, had turned into, I don't know exactly how to describe it other than to call it the first step toward the creation of particle-board.

And that is when I knew what was killing my lavendar plants: suffocation. I looked around my property and suddenly saw signs of it everywhere....spruce with dead branches from the ground until six feet up, junipers whose lower branches were brittle and needle-less.

I got to work immediately, first poking holes with my brand new handy dandy pitch fork, then raking the mulch away, revealing the sawdustlayer, which I then had to break up with a shovel. As I worked, literally AS I worked, the lavendar rescusitated, as if it had been given mouth to mouth. I poked, shoveled and raked until the garden was alive again, and covered in soil, rather than smothered in dead stuff.

How could my gardener have not known this? How could I not have realized it for an entire month of living here?

Well, at least I now understand what it means to *work* in the garden. And what tilling the soil means. And that I will never let mu gardener near my garden with a bag of mulch again. Soon, I will be planting seeds for perennials that need to be sown in late summer. And when I do, there ought not to be any surprises when I take spade to earth.

Which, believe it or not, brings me to my....drumroll please....nose. Deviated septum revealed on a CT scan taken in response to some complainrs that I had, both appearance-related and breath. And like Jen Aniston and Cammy D before me, I went and got it fixed. Today. In the office of an esteemed doctor who happens to be an Ashtangi. Or perhaps it is the other way around - esteemed Ashtangi who happens to be a dcotor. All I know is that I have never talked so much about yoga with someone about to take a scalpel to my sinuses. And I have never felt so positively about a surgery before, and trust me when I tell you that this chickie knows of what she speaks. If I had.a Native American name, it would be Many Surgeries.

All of which means no yoga this week. Or next week, and quite possibly for two weeks after that. Saying goodbye to Mark was difficult for me. He seemed disappointed, saying that we had just gotten started and that now was when things would have gotten intense. But he did note that next time he saw me, the ujaii ought to be turbo powered or something.

In the meantime, I have my bag of vitamin v, and a nose that is dripping blood like, well, no
metaphors here. Suffice it to say, I am a bloody, bruised mess.

But if you don"t see me at the shala, it's not because I am slacking, I'm just getting some air...

Y