saucy summer veggie noodle bowl

Sitting down to write this morning, I feel a lot like how our pollinator garden currently looks (see below): overwhelmed, tired, dried out, and wildly messy.

It’s fine, we’re fine (really) – just juggling the realities of life and motherhood and home ownership… this week brought a busted lawn mower, a broken HVAC system (which we’ve learned needs to be fully replaced), and a sick toddler… all while Matthew was traveling for work for most of the week.

But you know what? If you came over and walked through our insanely wild pollinator garden right now, amidst the weeds and chaos you’d find that it’s actually the most exciting spot on the farm – literally humming with birds and bugs and butterflies and bees, all flitting around the blooms and feasting on pollen. So even though it goes against all my perfectionist tendencies, I’m doing my best to *channel my inner pollinator garden* and just embrace the freaking mess.

And when all else fails, there’s one poem that brings me out of a funk, every damn time. It’s called “To be of use” by the poet Marge Piercy, and I’m going to share it below… please read it, share it, print it out, stick it on your fridge, and absorb the words into your bones.

We’re overwhelmed and tired, but we are capable of more than we can imagine. And the world needs you and your messy self now more than ever.

To be of use

by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as