I get a headache just thinking about all the things that need tending. Some people can plow right through these like they are simply small puddles in their paths. Some eagerly lap them up or skirt around them. But there are others of us who have a way of making our puddles grow into deep swamps until we are sinking in mud.

The Internet was down and the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes the day the electrician came to fix some dead electrical outlets, and the plumber showed up to repair the heater/air conditioner, and the excavator put in a drainage pipe to stop the garage from flooding. I was supposed to be pulling cattails from the pond but instead I was shooing away crows from the newly seeded lawn and following the electrician up and down the stairs. Where’s the joy? I wondered, thinking about the responsibilities and the bills that would follow. Abandoning my post, I phoned my friend Liz.
“Take me away from here,” I pleaded. “This is too much. I need to escape. I’ll go anywhere.”

She took me to Cayuga Landscape and then The Plantsmen Nurseries. We walked the grounds, sniffing the spirea, searching for a male holly and deer-resistant evergreens.
“Don’t look at the boxwood; it smells like cat pee,” she said. “This one you have to keep deadheading if you want it to flower. What’s your budget? Whoa, how many plants are you getting?” she asked as I dragged multiple flowering shrubs from their rows.

We drove home, the back of her car packed with Blue Princess hollies, Purple Candles astilbe, yellow coreopsis, blue catmints, and Buckley’s Quill mock orange. It was late when we got back. We unloaded the car and Liz left.

I looked at the fourteen plants that stood quivering on both sides of my front door, begging to be watered and planted. It was time to start facing my mud puddles.

What do you do to escape your responsibilities?